openroad

OpenROAD is an open-source end-to-end electronic design automation (EDA) toolchain for digital integrated circuit design. It aims to provide a complete RTL-to-GDSII flow that automates placement, routing, timing optimization, and related physical-design tasks, enabling researchers, educators, and developers to experiment with and reproduce IC design processes without dependence on proprietary workflows.

Development and governance of OpenROAD are community-driven, with contributions from universities, companies, and individual researchers. The project maintains a centralized repository and documentation, and releases are managed by a core team in collaboration with open contributors. It is part of a broader ecosystem of open-source EDA initiatives that seek to democratize silicon design, including collaborations with related projects that assemble end-to-end design flows.

Architecture and features of OpenROAD focus on modular, scriptable automation. The flow integrates tools and components that handle logic synthesis, floorplanning, placement, routing, timing optimization, and verification, producing standard outputs such as LEF/DEF and GDSII for fabrication. The project emphasizes reproducibility and parameter-driven experimentation, supporting batch operations, design space exploration, and integration with external technology libraries and process design kits provided by partners or the community.

Licensing and accessibility are central to OpenROAD, which is distributed under permissive open-source licenses and hosted publicly for inspection and contribution. It serves a variety of use cases, from academic instruction to early-stage research and open hardware exploration, and is commonly used in conjunction with open pipelines that extend from RTL to manufactured silicon.

OpenROAD is closely related to other open-source flows in the ecosystem, such as OpenLane, and together these efforts aim to broaden access to transparent, reproducible IC design methodologies.