🌟 ChipXplore

Natural Language Eploration of Hardware Designs and Libraries

Overview

ChipXplore is an LLM-Asissted system for navigating Process Design Kit (PDK) and Hardware Design Data (DEF).

Databases

First, download the PDK DB and Design DB.

Place the PDK database under ./dbs

Make sure you can connect to dbs correctly. View SQL DB in browser:

sqlite_web ./dbs/sky130_index.db 

Extract the design database and place it under ./data/daatabases/

Make sure that you have neo4j server installed. Start the neo4j server using docker as follows:

docker run --name neo4j-apoc -p 7474:7474 -p 7687:7687 -e NEO4J_AUTH=neo4j/your_password -e NEO4J_apoc_export_file_enabled=true -e NEO4J_apoc_import_file_enabled=true -e NEO4J_apoc_import_file_use__neo4j__config=true -e NEO4JLABS_PLUGINS='["apoc"]' --user $(id -u):$(id -g) -v $(pwd)/neo4j.conf:/conf/neo4j.conf -v $(pwd)/output:/var/lib/neo4j/import -v $PWD/data:/data -v $PWD/plugins:/plugins neo4j:4.4 2>&1 | tee neo4j_docker.log

Model API keys

Fill in your API keys in the .env file

Running Instructions

Run PDK workflow:

python core/graph_flow/pdk_flow.py --model <model-name>

Run Design workflow:

python core/graph_flow/design_flow.py --model <model-name>

Run the entire framework:

python core/runner.py --model <model-name>

Citation

@INPROCEEDINGS{abdelatty2025chipxplore,
author={M. {Abdelatty} and J. K {Rosenstein} and S. {Reda}},
    booktitle={IEEE International Conference on LLM-Aided Design (LAD), 2025},
    title={ChipXplore: Natural Language Exploration of Hardware Designs and Libraries},
    year={2025},
    volume={},
    number={},
}