Merge pull request #193 from ucb-bar/dev-hammer-docs

Dev hammer docs

docs/VLSI/HAMMER.rst

@@ -1,7 +1,58 @@
-HAMMER
+Core HAMMER
 ================================
 
 `HAMMER <https://github.com/ucb-bar/hammer>`__ is a physical design generator that wraps around vendor specific technologies and tools to provide a single API to create ASICs.
 HAMMER allows for reusability in ASIC design while still providing the designers leeway to make their own modifications.
 
 For more information, read the `HAMMER paper <https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~edwardw/pubs/hammer-woset-2018.pdf>`__ and see the `GitHub repository <https://github.com/ucb-bar/hammer>`__.
+
+Actions
+-------
+
+Actions are the top-level tasks Hammer is capable of executing (e.g. synthesis, place-and-route, etc.)
+
+Steps
+-------
+
+Steps are the sub-components of actions that individually addressable in Hammer (e.g. placement in the place-and-route action).
+
+Hooks
+-------
+
+Hooks are modifications to steps or actions that are programmatically defined in a Hammer configuration.
+
+Tool Plugins
+============
+
+Hammer supports separately managed plugins for different CAD tool vendors.
+The types of tools (in there hammer names) supported currently include:
+
+* synthesis
+* par
+* drc
+* lvs
+* sram_generator
+* pcb
+
+In order to configure your tool plugin of choice, you will need to set several configuration variables.
+First, you should select which specific tool you want to use by setting ``vlsi.core.<tool_type>_tool`` to the name of your tool.
+For example ``vlsi.core.par_tool: "innovus"``.
+You will also need to point hammer to the folder that contains your tool plugin by setting ``vlsi.core.<tool_type>_tool_path``.
+This directory should include a folder with the name of the tool as specified previously, which itself includes a python file ``__init__.py`` and a yaml file ``defaults.yml`` specifying the default values for any tool specific variables.
+In addition you can also customize the version of the tools you use by setting ``<tool_type>.<tool_name>.version`` to a tool specific string.
+Looking at the tools ``defaults.yml`` will inform you if there are other variables you would like to set for your use of this tool.
+
+The ``__init__.py`` file should contain a variable, ``tool``, that points to the class implementing this tools Hammer support.
+This class should be a subclass of ``Hammer<tool_type>Tool``, which will be a subclass of ``HammerTool``.
+
+Technology Plugins
+==================
+
+Hammer supports separately managed plugins for different technologies.
+
+Configuration
+=============
+
+To configure a hammer flow the user needs to supply a yaml or json configuration file the chooses the tool and technology plugins and versions as well as any design specific configuration APIs.
+
+You can see the current set of all available Hammer APIs `here <https://github.com/ucb-bar/hammer/blob/master/src/hammer-vlsi/defaults.yml>`__.

docs/VLSI/index.rst

@@ -1,11 +1,11 @@
-VLSI Production
+VLSI Flow
 ================================
 
-The Chipyard framework aim to provide wrappers to a general VLSI flow.
-In particular, we aim to support the HAMMER flow.
+The Chipyard framework aims to provide wrappers for a general VLSI flow.
+In particular, we aim to support the HAMMER physical design generator flow.
 
 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 2
-   :caption: VLSI Production:
+   :caption: VLSI Flow:
 
    HAMMER