Technology mapping¶
Previous chapters outlined how HDL code is transformed into an RTL netlist. The RTL netlist is still based on abstract coarse-grain cell types like arbitrary width adders and even multipliers. This chapter covers how an RTL netlist is transformed into a functionally equivalent netlist utilizing the cell types available in the target architecture.
Technology mapping is often performed in two phases. In the first phase RTL cells are mapped to an internal library of single-bit cells (see Gate-level cells). In the second phase this netlist of internal gate types is transformed to a netlist of gates from the target technology library.
When the target architecture provides coarse-grain cells (such as block ram or ALUs), these must be mapped to directly form the RTL netlist, as information on the coarse-grain structure of the design is lost when it is mapped to bit-width gate types.
Cell substitution¶
The simplest form of technology mapping is cell substitution, as performed by the techmap pass. This pass, when provided with a Verilog file that implements the RTL cell types using simpler cells, simply replaces the RTL cells with the provided implementation.
When no map file is provided, techmap uses a built-in map file that maps the
Yosys RTL cell types to the internal gate library used by Yosys. The curious
reader may find this map file as techlibs/common/techmap.v
in the Yosys
source tree.
Additional features have been added to techmap to allow for conditional mapping of cells (see techmap - generic technology mapper). This can for example be useful if the target architecture supports hardware multipliers for certain bit-widths but not for others.
A usual synthesis flow would first use the techmap pass to directly map some RTL cells to coarse-grain cells provided by the target architecture (if any) and then use techmap with the built-in default file to map the remaining RTL cells to gate logic.
Subcircuit substitution¶
Sometimes the target architecture provides cells that are more powerful than the RTL cells used by Yosys. For example a cell in the target architecture that can calculate the absolute-difference of two numbers does not match any single RTL cell type but only combinations of cells.
For these cases Yosys provides the extract pass that can match a given set of modules against a design and identify the portions of the design that are identical (i.e. isomorphic subcircuits) to any of the given modules. These matched subcircuits are then replaced by instances of the given modules.
The extract pass also finds basic variations of the given modules, such as swapped inputs on commutative cell types.
In addition to this the extract pass also has limited support for frequent subcircuit mining, i.e. the process of finding recurring subcircuits in the design. This has a few applications, including the design of new coarse-grain architectures [GW13].
The hard algorithmic work done by the extract pass (solving the isomorphic subcircuit problem and frequent subcircuit mining) is performed using the SubCircuit library that can also be used stand-alone without Yosys (see SubCircuit).
Gate-level technology mapping¶
On the gate-level the target architecture is usually described by a “Liberty file”. The Liberty file format is an industry standard format that can be used to describe the behaviour and other properties of standard library cells .
Mapping a design utilizing the Yosys internal gate library (e.g. as a result of mapping it to this representation using the techmap pass) is performed in two phases.
First the register cells must be mapped to the registers that are available on the target architectures. The target architecture might not provide all variations of d-type flip-flops with positive and negative clock edge, high-active and low-active asynchronous set and/or reset, etc. Therefore the process of mapping the registers might add additional inverters to the design and thus it is important to map the register cells first.
Mapping of the register cells may be performed by using the dfflibmap pass. This pass expects a Liberty file as argument (using the -liberty option) and only uses the register cells from the Liberty file.
Secondly the combinational logic must be mapped to the target architecture. This is done using the external program ABC via the abc pass by using the -liberty option to the pass. Note that in this case only the combinatorial cells are used from the cell library.
Occasionally Liberty files contain trade secrets (such as sensitive timing information) that cannot be shared freely. This complicates processes such as reporting bugs in the tools involved. When the information in the Liberty file used by Yosys and ABC are not part of the sensitive information, the additional tool yosys-filterlib (see yosys-filterlib) can be used to strip the sensitive information from the Liberty file.