KLayout

Installation

On Ubuntu, KLayout is available by default on the repositories, so we just have to install it:

sudo apt install klayout

Warning

IHP Open PDK needs at least KLayout 29, so you need to make sure you have a recent enough version. Before installation, you can check the version you would install with the command apt search ^klayout$. After, you can run klayout -v. If the version is not recent enough, you need to use a different way.

If the default version of your package manager is not recent enough you will have to use a different method. Everything is also explained on KLayout’s official website. You should also check this website to see available versions for your system.

For this example we will download the 29.8. Move to your tools_sources directory and do:

wget https://www.klayout.org/downloads/Ubuntu-24/klayout_0.29.8-1_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./klayout_0.29.8-1_amd64.deb

KLayout website doesn’t provide Arm64 packages, therefore you might need to build it yourself. First we need to install the dependencies:

sudo apt install ruby ruby-dev python3 python3-dev libz-dev libgit2-dev qtbase5-dev qttools5-dev libqt5xmlpatterns5-dev qtmultimedia5-dev libqt5multimediawidgets5 libqt5svg5-dev

Go to https://github.com/KLayout/klayout/releases and download the source code of the version you want to build:

git clone https://github.com/KLayout/klayout.git --branch v0.29.8
cd klayout

Now we can start the compilation:

mkdir ~/microelectronics/tools/klayout
./build.sh -prefix ~/microelectronics/tools/klayout

Once the compilation is done, we can add KLayout to our tools:

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/microelectronics/tools/klayout"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$HOME/microelectronics/tools/klayout"' >>  ~/.bashrc
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/microelectronics/tools/klayout"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$HOME/microelectronics/tools/klayout"

PDK installation for Klayout

We will link the PDK’s technology files to klayout directory:

mkdir -p  ~/.klayout/tech
ln -s ~/microelectronics/PDK/IHP/IHP-Open-PDK/ihp-sg13g2/libs.tech/klayout/tech ~/.klayout/tech/ihp-sg13g2
ln -s ~/.klayout/tech/ihp-sg13g2/sg13g2.lyp ~/.klayout/tech/
mkdir -p  ~/.klayout/python
ln -s ~/microelectronics/PDK/IHP/IHP-Open-PDK/ihp-sg13g2/libs.tech/klayout/python/* ~/.klayout/python/

Testing KLayout

We will now quickly test if KLyaout is working, and that the PDK is well installed. First open klayout:

klayout &

Once it is open you should see the technology selector in the upper toolbar:

Click on the arrow and select ihp-sg13g2.

Now we will open a sample GDS, just to see how it looks. We will take one of the inductor used for the OpenEMS example. For this click on File > Open. Then opened the GDS located at: ~/microelectronics/PDK/IHP/IHP-Open-PDK/ihp-sg13g2/libs.tech/openems/testcase/SG13_Octagon_L2n0/gds/L_2n0.gds.

To enable the technology, click on T of the left part of technology selector. You should see the layers color and the names in the right “Layers” panel have changed.

To only show the used layers, right clik in the “Layers” pane and select “Hide Empty Layers”. Then to properly select unwanted layers, for this left clik on the “NoRCX” layer then maintain the Shift key while clicking on the “GraphBot” layer. Now right click on one of the 9 selected layers and click on “Hide”. Now you should see something like this :