SKY130A Installation on WSL
This tutorial serves as documentation on the installation procedure for the SKY130A PDK and the required tooling for analog design under the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
The tools tend to come with a bunch of bugs and its generally better to use their bleeding edge rather than older distro versions.
Therefore, in this tutorial, I’ve opted to go for their bleeding edge, rather than older distro versions.
The software will be installed under ~/tools and the pdk will be installed under ~/pdk.
WSL
Use a Windows terminal to run:
wsl --install -d Ubuntu-24.04
wsl
This will drop you into the Linux terminal. You can now update the installed distribution by running:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
Tools
Currently the tools used are:
- Schematic editor: xschem
- Simulator: ngspice
- Layout: magic (TODO: klayout)
Development Environment Installation
Since most of the tools are going to be built from source, we first need to install basic build tooling
sudo apt install gcc g++ gdb make
TODO: There might be missing items here.
xschem
mkdir ~/tools/xschem; cd ~/tools/xschem
git clone https://github.com/StefanSchippers/xschem.git ./
# install prerequisites
sudo apt install tcl-dev tk-dev libx11-dev
sudo apt install libxrender-dev libx11-xcb-dev
sudo apt install libcairo2-dev bison libxpm-dev libjpeg-dev
# build and install
./configure --prefix=$HOME/tools
make
make install
ngspice
mkdir ~/tools/ngspice; cd ~/tools/ngspice
git clone https://git.code.sf.net/p/ngspice/ngspice ./
# install prerequisites
sudo apt install autoconf libtool automake
sudo apt install libxaw7-dev bison flex libreadline-dev
# build and install
./autoconf.sh
mkdir release; cd release
../configure --prefix=$HOME/tools --with-x --enable-cider --enable-predictor --enable-openmp --enable-osdi --enable-pss
make -j 16
make install
magic
mkdir ~/tools/magic; cd ~/tools/magic
git clone https://github.com/RTimothyEdwards/magic ./
# install prerequisites
sudo apt install m4 python3 libx11-dev tcl-dev tk-dev
sudo apt install libcairo2-dev mesa-common-dev
sudo apt install libgl-dev libglu1-mesa-dev zlib1g-dev
# build and install
./configure --prefix=$HOME/tools
make -j 16
make install
PDK
mdkir ~/pdk
mkidr ~/pdk/open_pdks; cd ~/pdk/open_pdks
git clone https://github.com/RTimothyEdwards/open_pdks ./
# build and install
./configure --prefix=$HOME/pdk --enable-sky130-pdk --with-sky130-variants=A
make -j 16
make install
Workarea Setup
MVP Experimentation Workarea
Create a simple workarea
export PDK_ROOT=$HOME/pdk/share/pdk
export PDK=sky130A
Copy xschemrc into the local workarea and modify it to look for the correct location for the SKY130A libraries.
cp $HOME/pdk/share/pdk/sky130A/libs.tech/xschem/xschemrc ./
append XSCHEM_LIBRARY_PATH :${PDK_ROOT}/${PDK}/libs.tech/xschem
You can now start the schematic editor by:
xschem