Installing Open-Source EDA Tools on a Virtual Machine

In this tutorial, we will create a Linux virtual machine (VM) running on your local (host) machine. We will then install open-source IC design tools here, isolated from the rest of your computer.

Installing Virtualization Software

There is a wide range of virtualization software available, such as VirtualBox or QEMU. For Windows and MacOS users, VirtualBox is a common choice, while Linux users would probably use QEMU/KVM. Download and install your chosen virtualization software.

After installing the virtualization software, you can now create virtual machines.

Installing Ubuntu

For EE220, it is sufficient to create a VM with 2 cores, 8GB of RAM, and 100GB of (disk) storage. Enable networking on your VM so you can download and install software from the web.

On your host computer, download the ISO image of the latest Ubuntu release from the Ubuntu website. We are using Ubuntu 22.04 for this tutorial.

Boot up your newly created VM using the Ubuntu ISO installer, and select normal installation. Follow the instructions for installing Ubuntu. At the end of the installation process, you will be asked to create a user account. You will use this to run the EDA tools we need for the class.

Installing Prerequisite Software

We need to install a C compiler and the necessary developer tools using:

$ sudo apt install build-essential

We then need to install the necessary libraries for compiling the software tools:

$ sudo apt install bison flex libx11-dev libreadline-dev libxaw7-dev libxmu-dev x11proto-xext-dev libxft-dev fontconfig libxrender-dev libfftw3-dev autoconf automake libtool libedit-dev adms tcl-dev tk-dev git csh libcairo-dev libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev

Installing NGSPICE

Download NGSPICE from via the NGSPICE website.