OpenC2: An Open-Source End-to-End Hardware Compiler Development Framework for Digital Compute-in-Memory Macro
Tianchu Dong, Shaoxuan Li, Yihang Zuo, Hongwu Jiang, Yuzhe Ma, Shanshi Huang · 2025
Digital Compute-in-Memory (DCIM), which inserts logic circuits into SRAM arrays, presents a significant advancement in CIM architecture. DCIM has shown great potential in applications, and the diversity of applications requires rapid hardware iteration. However, the hardware design flow from user specifications to layout is extremely tedious and time-consuming for manual design. Commercial EDA tools are limited by restrictive licenses and the inability to specifically optimize the datapath, which calls for an open-source end-to-end hardware compiler for DCIM. This paper proposes$\mathbf{O}\mathbf{p}\mathbf{e}\mathbf{n}\mathbf{C}^{2}$, the first open-source end-to-end development framework for DCIM macro compilation.$\mathbf{O}\mathbf{p}\mathbf{e}\mathbf{n}\mathbf{C}^{2}$provides a template-based generation platform for DCIM macros across various technologies, sizes, and configurations. It can automatically generate a datapath-optimized, compact DCIM macro layout based on a hierarchical physical design methodology. Our experiment results show that$\mathbf{O}\mathbf{p}\mathbf{e}\mathbf{n}\mathbf{C}^{2}$'s compact design on FreePDK45 delivers over 30% area reduction and over 40% improvement in area efficiency compared to AutoDCIM on TSMC40.