Home

• Introduction to HAL - The idea of HAL and an overview of its core components.

  • Building HAL - How to build HAL on your own machine.
  • Starting HAL - Overview of the startup options provided by HAL.

• Core - The part of HAL that provides its underlying functionality.

  • Netlist - Represents the connectivity of an electronic circuit.
    • Data Container - A general structure to hold arbitrary data.
    • Gate - Represents the functional or sequential building blocks of a netlist.
    • Net - Serves as a connection between gates within the netlist.
    • Module - Represents a functional unit of gates fulfilling a dedicated purpose.
    • Grouping - Provides an easy way to group gates, nets, and modules.
    • Endpoint - The point where a net connects to a gate.
  • Gate Library - Holds all available gate types of a specific standard cell library.
    • Gate Type - Specifies details of the underlying type of a gate.
  • Boolean Function - Specifies the Boolean function of a gate (type).
  • Netlist Utilities - A set of utility functions operating on the netlist providing diverse functionality.

• GUI - An in-depth description of the HAL GUI and its functionalities.

  • General Concepts - Some of the concepts that are important to understand when dealing with the GUI.
    • Selection - A selection of gates, nets, and modules highlighted within the graph view.
    • View - Contains a subset of the netlist's components.
  • Widgets - Details regarding each of the GUI's widgets.
    • Graph View - Displays the netlist and substructures as a visual graph.
    • Modules Widget - An overview about the netlist's module hierarchy.
    • Views Widget - Shows and manages all existing views.
    • Groupings Widget - Shows and manages all existing groupings.
    • Selection Details Widget - Presents detailed information on all items of the current selection.
    • Log Widget - Provides a live view of the HAL log.
    • Python Editor Widget - A lightweight tool for developing HAL python scripts.
    • Python Console Widget - Fast and easy access to the HAL Python API.
  • Python GUI API - Interact with GUI selections via python.
  • Python Thread - Running Python interpreter in background thread.
  • Settings - Settings for the HAL GUI.
  • Plugin Management - Manage plugins from GUI.

• Plugins

  • Provided Plugins - The set of plugins that come with the off-the-shelf variant of HAL.
    • Gate Library Files - The gate libraries supported by HAL by default.
    • Netlist Simulator and Waveform Viewer - A simulation framework with integrated viewer for waveform analysis.
    • Graph Algorithms - An interface to the igraph library to enable running graph algorithms on the netlist.
    • Dataflow Analysis - A tool used to automatically analyze the flow of data through the netlist.
    • HAWKEYE - A tool to automatically locate symmetric cryptographic primitives within a gate-level netlist.
    • Netlist Parsers & Writers (TODO)
    • Gate Library Parsers & Writers (TODO)
  • Create your own Plugins (TODO)
    • Creating an Empty Plugin
    • Plugin Python Bindings (TODO)
    • Standard Plugin (outdated)
    • Netlist Parser (TODO)
    • Netlist Writer (TODO)
    • Gate Library Parser (TODO)
    • Gate Library Writer (TODO)
    • Gate Library - Create a gate library file that can be read by HAL.

• Contributing

  • Reporting Bugs
  • GUI Coding Guidelines (WIP)