markdown/gh_discussions/Installation/2971.md

Arm64 Support

Subcategory: Architecture compatibility

Conversation

DylanTom

Hi, I am looking to use OpenROAD and have tried to install it on my computer.

It is an M2 Pro Macbook Pro, 32 GB RAM, 1TB SSD. I am running an Ubuntu VM through UTM which has 8GB RAM and 64 GB SSD.

I am having trouble with building OpenROAD because one of the dependencies is or-tools, which does not appear to have Ubuntu support for the ARM architecture. I was wondering if anyone had similar issues or would know how to resolve this.

Specifically, does OpenROAD support the ARM architecture, and if not, is that a priority in the future?

Thanks!

vijayank88

Can you try OpenROAD-flow-scripts with docker based: https://openroad-flow-scripts.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/BuildWithDocker.html#clone-and-build

maliberty

We do not officially support it as we don't have the hardware resources to test on that platform. We do try to make sure we can compile on mac M1 based systems. That said or-tools is available for arm64 as Vijayan pointed out.

vvbandeira

Note: OR-Tools only provides archives for the x86_64 (also known as amd64) architecture. Source: https://developers.google.com/optimization/install/cpp/binary_linux

@DylanTom If you are already using a VM, you can create a x86_64 VM and avoid this issue.

stefanottili

If you're on M2, why not give "native" OR a try ?

I've been compiling it on and off using HomeBrew for dependencies (including or-tools) for a while now. or-tools and mpl2 keep on breaking the build and mpl2 is still be disabled.

-- Removing MPL2 and PAR to avoid run time fatal error.

So occasionally it doesn't work, but most of the times I got it to compile in < 15min on a M1.

etc/DependencyInstaller.sh (unforunately now installs x86 klayout, I prefer building it natively) ./build_openroad.sh --local --latest --clean-force (breaks today in a mpl2 test) ./build_openroad.sh --local (when run again it finishes, go figure)