Hi all, I wanted to confirm whether or not the requirement that “The project must be fully open. The project must contain a GDSII layout, which must be reproducible from source contained in the project.” means that the entire RTL->GDSII flow must be reproducible using open tooling? I.e. are we allowed to use proprietary or unreleased software as part of the build flow?

I think you can't use any closed source software but @Tim 'mithro' Ansell can confirm.

?? The Caravel framework was certainly routed using closed source tools.

The framework is not a user design for submission

Sure, I guess the question becomes can pre-built blocks (without source) be incorporated in a user submission?

(update from the walkthrough this morning: sounds like it is okay to use proprietary tools in your flow, as long as you publish the design and the GDS)