Supported Backends

Seven nextpnr backends are included, each as a separate binary. All chipdb data is embedded in the binary at build time (no external data files required at runtime), except where noted.

Binary	Target family	Source / chipdb dependency
nextpnr-ice40	Lattice iCE40	Project IceStorm — chipdb compiled in
nextpnr-ecp5	Lattice ECP5	Project Trellis — chipdb compiled in
nextpnr-machxo2	Lattice MachXO2/3	Project Trellis — chipdb compiled in
nextpnr-mistral	Intel/Altera Cyclone V	Mistral (libmistral linked in)
nextpnr-himbaechel-gowin	Gowin GW1N / GW2A	Apicula — share/nextpnr/himbaechel/gowin/ ¹
nextpnr-himbaechel-gatemate	Cologne Chip GateMate	Project Peppercorn — share/nextpnr/himbaechel/gatemate/ ¹
nextpnr-generic	Generic / custom architectures	No chipdb

¹ himbaechel backends use external .bin chipdb files installed under share/nextpnr/ next to the bin/ directory. The binary locates them automatically via /proc/self/exe — the relative layout is preserved in the tarball so this works from any extract path.

Build-time dependencies

The following libraries are built from source and either compiled into the binaries or linked statically:

• Boost (all backends) — statically linked

• libstdc++ / libgcc — statically linked via -static-libstdc++ -static-libgcc

• IceStorm (iCE40) — share/icebox/ read at CMake configure time only

• Trellis (ECP5/MachXO2) — pytrellis.so imported at CMake configure time only

• Mistral (Cyclone V) — libmistral built and linked into the binary

• Apicula (Gowin) — Python generator invoked at CMake configure time only

• Peppercorn (GateMate) — device files read at CMake configure time only

Runtime shared-library dependencies are limited to universally available base OS libraries: libc, libm, libz, libbz2, liblzma, libzstd, and ld-linux.