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https://github.com/llvm/circt

Circuit IR Compilers and Tools
https://github.com/llvm/circt

circt llvm mlir

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Circuit IR Compilers and Tools

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# ⚡️ "CIRCT" / Circuit IR Compilers and Tools



"CIRCT" stands for "Circuit Intermediate Representations (IR) Compilers and Tools".  One might also interpret

it as the recursively as "CIRCT IR Compiler and Tools".  The T can be

selectively expanded as Tool, Translator, Team, Technology, Target, Tree, Type,

... we're ok with the ambiguity.



The CIRCT community is an open and welcoming community.  If you'd like to

participate, you can do so in a number of different ways:



1) Join our [Discourse Forum](https://llvm.discourse.group/c/Projects-that-want-to-become-official-LLVM-Projects/circt/) 

on the LLVM Discourse server.  To get a "mailing list" like experience click the 

bell icon in the upper right and switch to "Watching".  It is also helpful to go 

to your Discourse profile, then the "emails" tab, and check "Enable mailing list 

mode".  You can also do chat with us on [CIRCT channel](https://discord.com/channels/636084430946959380/742572728787402763) 

of LLVM discord server.



2) Join our weekly video chat.  Please see the

[meeting notes document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fOSRdyZR2w75D87yU2Ma9h2-_lEPL4NxvhJGJd-s5pk/edit#)

for more information.



3) Contribute code.  CIRCT follows all of the LLVM Policies: you can create pull

requests for the CIRCT repository, and gain commit access using the [standard LLVM policies](https://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#obtaining-commit-access).



## Motivation



The EDA industry has well-known and widely used proprietary and open source

tools.  However, these tools are inconsistent, have usability concerns, and were

not designed together into a common platform.  Furthermore

these tools are generally built with

[Verilog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verilog) (also

[VHDL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHDL)) as the IRs that they

interchange.  Verilog has well known design issues, and limitations, e.g.

suffering from poor location tracking support.



The CIRCT project is an (experimental!) effort looking to apply MLIR and

the LLVM development methodology to the domain of hardware design tools.  Many

of us dream of having reusable infrastructure that is modular, uses

library-based design techniques, is more consistent, and builds on the best

practices in compiler infrastructure and compiler design techniques.



By working together, we hope that we can build a new center of gravity to draw

contributions from the small (but enthusiastic!) community of people who work

on open hardware tooling.  In turn we hope this will propel open tools forward,

enables new higher-level abstractions for hardware design, and

perhaps some pieces may even be adopted by proprietary tools in time.



For more information, please see our longer [charter document](docs/Charter.md).



## Setting this up



These commands can be used to setup CIRCT project:



1) **Install Dependencies** of LLVM/MLIR according to [the

  instructions](https://mlir.llvm.org/getting_started/), including cmake and 

  ninja.



2) **Check out LLVM and CIRCT repos.**  CIRCT contains LLVM as a git

submodule.  The LLVM repo here includes staged changes to MLIR which

may be necessary to support CIRCT.  It also represents the version of

LLVM that has been tested.  MLIR is still changing relatively rapidly,

so feel free to use the current version of LLVM, but APIs may have

changed.



```

$ git clone [email protected]:llvm/circt.git

$ cd circt

$ git submodule init

$ git submodule update

```



*Note:* The repository is set up so that `git submodule update` performs a 

shallow clone, meaning it downloads just enough of the LLVM repository to check 

out the currently specified commit. If you wish to work with the full history of

the LLVM repository, you can manually "unshallow" the the submodule:



```

$ cd llvm

$ git fetch --unshallow

```



3) **Build and test LLVM/MLIR:**



```

$ cd circt

$ mkdir llvm/build

$ cd llvm/build

$ cmake -G Ninja ../llvm \

    -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="mlir" \

    -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD="host" \

    -DLLVM_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS=ON \

    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DEBUG \

    -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON

$ ninja

$ ninja check-mlir

```



4) **Build and test CIRCT:**



```

$ cd circt

$ mkdir build

$ cd build

$ cmake -G Ninja .. \

    -DMLIR_DIR=$PWD/../llvm/build/lib/cmake/mlir \

    -DLLVM_DIR=$PWD/../llvm/build/lib/cmake/llvm \

    -DLLVM_ENABLE_ASSERTIONS=ON \

    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DEBUG \

    -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON

$ ninja

$ ninja check-circt

$ ninja check-circt-integration # Run the integration tests.

```



The `-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=DEBUG` flag enables debug information, which makes the

whole tree compile slower, but allows you to step through code into the LLVM

and MLIR frameworks. The `-DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON` flag generates

a `build/compile_commands.json` file, which can be used by editors (or plugins)

for autocomplete and/or IDE-like features.



To get something that runs fast, use `-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release` or

`-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo` if you want to go fast and optionally if

you want debug info to go with it.  `Release` mode makes a very large difference

in performance.



Consult the [Getting Started](docs/GettingStarted.md) page for detailed 

information on configuring and compiling CIRCT.



Consult the [Python Bindings](docs/PythonBindings.md) page if you are mainly

interested in using CIRCT from a Python prompt or script.