Sample clues

14 across: FDR’s baby (3,4)

1 down: A glitch in the Matrix? (4,2)

4 down: Slanted character (6)

5 down: New Year’s venue in New York (5,6)

16 down: Atmosphere of melancholy (5)

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Sample clues

6 across: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s breakthrough film (6,6)

19 across: Soft leather shoe (8)

7 down: Randroids, for example (12)

12 down: First American World Chess Champion (7)

17 down: Circle of influence (5)

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Sample clues

5 across: Robbie Robertson song about Richard Manuel (6,5)

2 down: F5 on a keyboard (7)

10 across: Lionel Richie hit (5)

3 down: ALTAIR, for example (5)

16 down: The problem with Florida 2000 (5)

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Sample clues

9 across: Van Morrison classic from Moondance (7)

6 down: Order beginning with ‘A’ (12)

6 across: Fatal weakness (8,4)

19 across: Rolling Stones classic (12)

4 down: Massacre tool (8)

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In 1981, Jimmy Page, Chris Squire and Alan White got together to form a band, and tried to recruit Robert Plant into it. Plant attended one rehearsal, chose not to join the band, and the project fell through. Had it survived, the band would have called itself XYZ. Why?

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Physical synthesis has been around in various forms for many years. The basic idea is to bring some awareness of physical layout into synthesis. This week (June 3, 2015) Cadence is rolling out the Genus™ Synthesis Solution, a next-generation RTL synthesis tool that takes physical awareness in some new directions.

Here are four important things to know about Genus technology:

• A massively parallel architecture improves turnaround time by up to 5X while maintaining quality of results
• The Genus solution synthesizes up to 10M+ instances flat without impacting power, performance and area (PPA)
• The Genus solution provides tight correlation with the Innovus Implementation System, using the same placement and routing algorithms
• Globally focused PPA optimization saves up to 20% datapath area and power

Compared to previous-generation products such as the Cadence Encounter RTL Compiler Advanced Physical Option, the Genus solution approaches physical synthesis in a different way. The Encounter solution applied physical optimization “at the tail end of synthesis,” said David Stratman, senior principal product manager at Cadence. “We were doing a final incremental push, but we could only do so much, since we had locked in a lot of the earlier steps from a logical-only synthesis perspective.”

Genus Synthesis Solution supports the physical synthesis features in the previous Encounter solution, but it also brings the full physical scope upstream to RTL logic designers. “It’s going to enable the unit-level RTL designer to gain the benefits of physical synthesis without having to understand it,” Stratman said. As an example, users can apply generic (unmapped) placement at the earliest stages of synthesis, using a lightweight version of the Innovus placement engine. The bottom line: “Genus is a full solution where every step of synthesis can be done physically.”

Getting Massively Parallel

If you bring physical data into synthesis, you need a way to improve capacity and runtimes, especially with today’s gigantic advance-node SoCs. That’s why a massively parallel architecture is the cornerstone of the Genus solution. In this way, the Genus solution is following in the footsteps of the Innovus Implementation System, which also provides a massively parallel architecture.

Both the Innovus and Genus solutions can handle blocks of 10M instances flat. Given that SoCs today may have up to 100M instances, and often up to 50-100 top-level blocks, this is an important capability. Many tools today will only handle blocks of 1M instances. As a result, design teams often have to constrain block sizes.

Genus technology offers timing-driven, multi-level design partitioning across multiple threads and machines. It enables a near-linear runtime scaling without impacting PPA. According to Stratman, the Genus solution will scale well beyond 64 CPUs for a large design, with a “sweet spot” around 8-20 CPUs for today’s typical block sizes. Runs that used to take days, he noted, can now be done in hours.

As shown below, Genus technology leverages parallelism at three levels. The Genus solution can distribute design partitions to multiple threads or CPUs, and also supports local algorithm-level multithreading on each machine with shared memory. An adaptive scheduler ensures the best use of the available CPUs.

Fig. 1 – Genus Synthesis Solution provides three levels of parallelism

With its massive parallelism, Stratman said, Genus technology can obtain production-level quality of results (QoR) in runtimes typically seen in “prototype-level” synthesis runs. The “secret sauce,” he said, is in the partitioning. Cadence has found a way to generate partitions in a way that “slices the design more intelligently, and takes advantage of the Genus database to merge partitions without losing timing, power, or area,” Stratman said.

Playing in the Sandbox

In the Genus Synthesis Solution, a process called “sandboxing” allows any subset or partition of a design to be extracted along with full timing and a physical context. Optimization algorithms will treat a sandbox as a complete design.

The “Clipper” flow clips out or extracts the context of the larger SoC blocks. “It’s kind of a skeleton floorplan but it has all the timing information,” Stratman said. These extracted contexts include all the critical physical information to make the right RTL synthesis choices at the unit level. This information is used to streamline the handoffs between unit-level RTL designers, integration engineers, and implementation engineers. It’s a way for logic designers to gain some physical knowledge without having to be a physical synthesis expert, or without having to run a full top-level synthesis.

Fig. 2 – Clipper flow provides context for unit-level blocks

Correlation with Innovus Implementation System

Although Genus technology can work with third-party IC implementation systems, it shares algorithms and engines with Innovus Implementation System, as well as a common user interface. As shown below, both the Genus and Innovus solutions use a table-based Quantus QRC parasitic extraction, effective current source model (ECSM) and composite current source (CCS) delay calculations, and a unified global routing engine. Timing and wire length claim a 5% correlation.

Fig. 3 – Genus Synthesis Solution offers tight correlation with Innovus Implementation System

Genus technology doesn’t model everything to the same level of accuracy as the Innovus solution, however. “We chose to be lighter weight and more nimble to get expected runtimes,” Stratman said. A tight correlation is possible because the Genus and Innovus solutions use a similar code base. This correlation will be tighter than that between Encounter RTL Compiler Advanced Physical Option and the Encounter Digital Implementation System today.

Genus Synthesis Solution uses a new Hybrid Global Router that provides the ability to resolve congestion and construct layer-aware, timing-driven wire topologies. This accelerates analysis and debug, and reduces iterations. Users can avoid blockages and see a full Manhattan route as opposed to “flight lines.” Layer awareness is particularly important, given the large RC variations within the metal stack at advanced process nodes.

A version of the Innovus GigaPlace engine is available within the Genus solution. Here, users can do an RTL-level generic gate placement early in the synthesis flow (“generic gate” means there is no mapping into standard cell libraries, but there’s still an area estimate). This helps designers understand PPA tradeoffs earlier.

While users can go all the way to a design-rule “legal” placement with Genus Synthesis Solution, this isn’t generally recommended. “You can do a placement and use the same algorithms as GigaPlace and get a nice correlation without all the runtimes and additional steps of doing a fully legal placement,” Stratman said.

So where does Genus technology end and Innovus technology begin? That’s up to the user. You could use the Genus solution for logical synthesis and run all physical implementation in the Innovus system. If you run physical synthesis within the Genus solution, there’s more work earlier in the flow, but you get better insights into downstream problems and reduce iterations.

“Physical synthesis should be no more than 2X [runtime] of logic synthesis,” Stratman said. “All of the runtime that moves up should be shaved off of the place-and-route stages, because now you can do lightweight incremental optimization and incremental placement. The overall flow should be runtime neutral or better.”

Be Globally Aware

Finally, Genus Synthesis Solution offers a globally focused early PPA optimization across the whole datapath, delivering up to a 20% area reduction in the datapath. Stratman noted that this capability is a follow-on to an RCP feature called “globally focused mapping” that can determine the best cells to use in a library. What’s new with the Genus solution is that this concept has been applied at the arithmetic level.

For example, there are many ways to configure a multiplier – you may want to prioritize speed, power, or size. In the past, Stratman noted, synthesis tools have not been very good at globally optimizing the architecture selection for PPA optimization. “We can [now] find the most efficient global datapath implementation for a given region,” he said.

For further information about the Cadence Genus Synthesis Solution, including a datasheet and technical product brief, see this landing page.

Richard Goering

Related Blog Posts

Designer View – RTL Synthesis Success Strategies at 28nm and Below

Front-End Design Summit: The Future of RTL Synthesis and Design for Test

Physically-Aware Synthesis Helps Design a New Computer Architecture

First, the good news. The EDA industry will grow from $6.2 billion in 2015 to $9.0 billion in 2019, according to Gary Smith, chief analyst at Gary Smith EDA. Year-to-year growth rates will range from +4% to +11.2%.

But in his annual presentation on the eve of the Design Automation Conference (DAC 2015), Smith noted that Wall Street is unimpressed. “The people I talk to want long-term steady growth, no sharp up-turns, no sharp downturns,” Smith said. “To the rest of Wall Street, we’re boring.”

Smith spent the rest of his talk noting how EDA can be a lot less boring and, potentially, a whole lot bigger. For starters, what if we add semiconductor IP to EDA revenues? Now we’re looking at $12.2 billion in revenue by 2019, Smith said. (He acknowledged, however, that the IP market itself is going to take a “dip” due to the move towards platform-based IP and away from conventional piecemeal IP).

This still is not enough to get Wall Street’s attention. Another possibility is to bring embedded software development into the EDA industry. This is not a huge market – about $2.6 billion today – but it is an “easy growth market for us,” according to Smith.

Chasing the Big Bucks

But the “big bucks” are in mechanical CAD (MCAD), Smith said. In the past the MCAD market has always been bigger than EDA, but now EDA is catching up. The MCAD market is about $6.6 billion now. Synopsys and Cadence are larger than PTC and Siemens, two of the main players in MCAD.

There may be some good acquisition possibilities coming up for EDA vendors, Smith said – and if we don’t buy MCAD companies, they might buy EDA companies. Consider, for example, that Ansoft bought Apache and Dassault bought Synchronicity. (Note: Siemens PLM Software is a first-time exhibitor at DAC 2015).

What about other domains? Smith said that EDA companies could conceivably move into optical design, applications development software, biomedical design, and chemical design. The last if these is probably the most tenuous; Smith noted that EDA vendors have yet to look into chemical design.

Applications development software is the biggest market on the above list, but that means competing with Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. “You’re in with the big boys – is that a good idea?” Smith asked.

Perhaps there’s an opening for a “big play” for an MCAD provider. Smith noted that mechanical vendors are focusing on product data management (PDM). This “is really the IT of design,” Smith said. “They have a lot of hope that the IoT [Internet of things] market is going to give them an opportunity to capture the software that goes from the ground to the cloud. Maybe we can let them have PDM and see if we can take the tool market away from them, or acquire it away from them.”

In conclusion, Smith asked, should the EDA industry accelerate its growth? “The mechanical vendors have already shown interest in acquiring EDA vendors,” he said. “We may not have a choice.”

Richard Goering

NOTE: Catch our live blog from DAC 2015, beginning Monday morning, June 8! Click here

In 1985, as a relatively new editor at Computer Design magazine, I was asked to go forth and cover a new business called CAE (computer-aided engineering). I knew nothing about it, but I had been writing about design for test, so there seemed to be somewhat of a connection. Little did I know that “CAE” would turn into “EDA” and that I’d write about it for the next 30 years, for Computer Design, EE Times, Cadence, and a few others.

Now that I’m about to retire, I’m looking back over those 30 years. What a ride it has been! By the numbers I covered 31 Design Automation Conferences (DACs), hundreds of new products, dozens of acquisitions and startups, dozens of lawsuits, and some blind alleys that didn’t work out (like “silicon compilation”). Chip design went from gate arrays and PLDs with a few thousand gates to processors and SoCs with billions of transistors.

In 1985 there were three big CAE vendors – Daisy Systems, Mentor Graphics, and Valid Logic. All sold bundled packages that included workstations and CAE software; in fact, Daisy and Valid designed and manufactured their own workstations. In the early 1980s a workstation with schematic capture and gate-level logic simulation might have set you back $120,000. In 1985 OrCAD, now part of Cadence, came out with a $500 schematic capture package running on IBM PCs.

Cadence and Synopsys emerged in the late 1980s, and by the 1990s the EDA industry was pretty much a software-only business (apart from specialized machines like simulation accelerators). Since the early 1990s the “big three” EDA vendors have been Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor, giving the industry stability but allowing for competition and innovation.

Here, in my view, are some of the highlights that occurred during the past 30 years of EDA.

EDA is a Highlight

The biggest highlight in EDA is the existence of a commercial EDA industry! Marching hand in hand with the fabless semiconductor revolution, commercial EDA made it possible for hundreds of companies to design semiconductors, as opposed to a small handful that could afford large internal CAD operations and fabs. With hundreds of semiconductor companies as opposed to a half-dozen, there’s a lot more creativity, and you get the level of sophistication and intelligence that you see in your smartphone, video camera, tablet, gaming console, and car today.

CAE + CAD = EDA. This is not just a terminology issue. By the mid-1980s it became clear that front-end design (CAE) and physical design (CAD) belonged together. The big CAE vendors got involved in IC and PCB CAD, and presented increasingly integrated solutions. People got tired of writing “CAE/CAD” and “EDA” was born.

The move from gate-level design to RTL. This move happened around 1990, and in my view this is EDA’s primary technology success story during the past 30 years. Moving up in abstraction made the design and verification of much larger chips possible. Going from gate-level schematics to a hardware description language (HDL) revolutionized logic design and verification. Which would you rather do – draw all the gates that form an adder, or write a few lines of code and let a synthesis tool find an adder in your chosen technology?

Two developments made this shift in design possible. One was the emergence of commercial RTL synthesis (or “logic synthesis”) tools from Synopsys and other companies, which happened around 1990. Another was the availability of Verilog, developed by Gateway Design Automation and purchased by Cadence in 1989, as a standard RTL HDL. Although most EDA vendors at the time were pushing VHDL, designers wanted Verilog and that’s what most still use (with SystemVerilog coming on strong in the verification space).

IC functional verification underwent huge changes in the late 1990s and early 2000s, largely due to new technology developed by Verisity, which was acquired by Cadence in 2005. Before Verisity, verification engineers were writing and running directed tests in an ad-hoc manner. Verisity introduced or improved technologies such as pseudo-random test generation, coverage metrics, reusable verification IP, and semi-automated verification planning. The Verisity “e” language became a widely used hardware verification language (HVL).

The biggest way that EDA has expanded its focus has been through semiconductor IP. Today Synopsys and Cadence are leading providers in this area. Thanks to the availability of design and verification IP, many SoC designs today reuse as much as 80% of previous content. This makes it much, much faster to design the remaining portion. While IP began with fairly simple elements, today commercially available IP can include whole subsystems along with the software that runs on them. With IP, EDA vendors are providing not only design tools but design content.

Finally, the EDA industry has done an amazing job of keeping up with SoC complexity and with advanced process nodes. Thanks to intense and early collaboration between foundries, IP, and EDA providers, tools and IP have been ready for process nodes going down to 10nm.

Where Does ESL Fit?

In some ways, electronic system level (ESL) design is both a lowlight and a highlight. It’s a lowlight because people have been talking about it for 30 years and the acceptance and adoption have come very slowly. ESL is a highlight because it’s finally starting to happen, and its impact on design and verification flows could be dramatic. Still, ESL is vaguely defined and can be used to describe almost anything that happens at a higher abstraction level than RTL.

High-level synthesis (HLS) is an ESL technology that is seeing increasing use in production environments. Current HLS tools are not restricted to datapaths, and they produce RTL code that gives better quality of results than hand-written RTL. Another ESL methodology that’s catching on is virtual prototyping, which lets software developers write software pre-silicon using SystemC models. Both HLS and virtual prototyping are made possible by the standardization of SystemC and transaction-level modeling (TLM). However, it’s still not easy to use the same SystemC code for HLS and virtual prototyping.

And Now, Some Lowlights

Every new industry has some twists and turns, and EDA is no exception. For example, the EDA industry in the 1980s and 1990s sparked a lot of lawsuits. At EE Times my colleagues and I wrote a number of articles about EDA legal disputes, mostly about intellectual property, trade secrets, or patent issues. Over the past decade, fortunately, there have been far fewer EDA lawsuits than we had before the turn of the century.

Another issue that was troublesome in the 1980s and 1990s was so-called “standards wars.” These would occur as EDA vendors picked one side or the other in a standards dispute. For example, power intent formats were a point of conflict in the early 2000s, but the Common Power Format (CPF) and the Unified Power Format (UPF) are on the road to convergence today with the IEEE 1801 effort. As mentioned previously, Verilog and VHDL were competing for adoption in the early 1990s. For the most part, Verilog won, showing that the designer community makes the final decision about which standards will be used.

How on earth did there get to be something like 30 DFM (design for manufacturability) companies 10-12 years ago? To my knowledge, none of these companies are around today. A few were acquired, but most simply faded away. A lot of investors lost money. Today, VCs and angel investors are funding very few EDA or IP startups. There are fewer EDA startups than there used to be, and that’s too bad, because that’s where a lot of the innovation comes from.

Here’s another current lowlight -- not enough bright engineering or computer science students are joining EDA companies. They’re going to Google, Apple, Facebook, and the like. EDA is perceived as a mature industry that is still technically very difficult. We need to bring some excitement back into EDA.

Where Is EDA Headed?

Now we come to what you might call “headlights” and look at what’s coming. My list includes:

• System Design Enablement. This term has been coined by Cadence to describe a focus on whole systems or end products including chips, packages, boards, embedded software, and mechanical components. There are far more systems companies than semiconductor companies, leaving a large untapped market that’s looking for solutions.
• New frontiers for EDA. At a 2015 Design Automation Conference speech, analyst Gary Smith suggested that EDA can move into markets such as embedded software, mechanical CAD, biomedical, optics, and more.
• Vertical markets. EDA has until now been “horizontal,” providing the same solution for all market segments. Going forward, markets like consumer, automotive, and industrial will have differing needs and will need optimized tools and IP.
• Internet of Things. This is a current buzzword, but the impact on EDA remains uncertain. Many IoT devices will be heavily analog, use mature process nodes, and be dirt cheap. Lip-Bu Tan, Cadence CEO, recently pointed out that the silicon percentage of IoT revenue will be small and that a lot of the profits will be on the service side.

Moving On

For the past six years I’ve been writing the Industry Insights blog at Cadence.com. All things change, and with this post comes a farewell – I am retiring in late June and will be pursuing a variety of interests other than EDA. I’ll be watching, though, to see what happens next in this small but vital industry. Thanks for reading!

Richard Goering

I have completed physical design of a block in innovus. I want to extract rc of that block using quantus .  It will be very helpful if you give step by step procedure and command to run quantus to extract rc of that block.

Hi,

There was tool available with INCISIV called imc to view the coverage reports.

The question is: How can we view the code coverage reports generated with XCELIUM? I think imc is not available with XCELIUM?

Thanks in advance.

Hello, i have a logic output from a D-flipflop which generates a reset signal with variable pulse width. I want to stretch this LOW pulse width with an extra 100ns added to the original pulse width digitally, is there any way to do that?

hi all, 

          what wrong with the error "param_write.log does not exist" when i export parameters in allegro 16.6 pcb board.

          someone can provide suggestions, thanks.

best regards.

HI!

I want to use map_to_mux pragma for a particular logic in my code, which is in generate block. 

module xyz

parameter P_IN_WIDTH= 100

parameter P_OUT_WIDTH =100

parameter P_XXX = 1

parameter P_ZZZ=1

parameter P_IN_OFFSET_WD = 10

input [P_IN_WD-1:0]  in_data;

input [P_IN_OFFSET_WD-1:0] in_offset;

output [P_IN_WD-1:0]  out_data;

generate
if (P_XXX == 1)

// cadence infer_mux "MUX"
// cadence map_to_mux "MUX"

begin : XXX

assign c_out = (in_data >> in_offset*P_ZZZ);
end
else

// cadence infer_mux "MUX"
// cadence map_to_mux "MUX"
begin : YYY
assign c_out = (in_data << in_offset*P_ZZZ);
end
endgenerate

endmodule

Hi Folks, Check out this great new video on YouTube: CDNLive SV 2014: PMC Improves Visibility and Performance with Spectre APS In this video from CDNLive Silicon Valley 2014, Jurgen Hissen, principal engineer, MSCAD, at PMC, discusses an aggressive...(read more)

Hi,

I want to convert ircx file(which is from TSMC,inclued EM Information) to ict or emDataFile for Voltus-fi.

I tried many way, but I can not make it. Can anyone give me some advice?

and I  do not installed QRC.

below is some tools installed my server. 

IC617-64b.500.21 is used.

Hi Team,

Problem Statement:In hierarchical layout, I want to get BBOX of particular layer without actually flattening the layout.

Description:The layer can be at any hierarchical depth i.e both from PCELL or shapes but at top level if they are overlapping then I want the merged BBOX.

Now, I am able to get BBOX of all the shapes present at different hierarchy.But i finding issue in merging BBOX.

Please can help me on the same issue as I require efficient way to merge the BBOX because list containing the BBOX is huge.

Thanks in advance.

Regrads,

Prasanna

I have a SKILL script that executes the callback of a menu item, and depends on first redefining an environment variable. 

When a user interrupts the script with ctrl-C, the script cannot finish to set the environment variable back to its default value.

How can I write the script in a way that handles a user interrupt to reset the changed environment variable after the interrupt?

I have a modeless informational dialog box defined at the beginning of a SKILL script, but its contents don't display until the script finishes.

How do you get a modeless dialog box contents to display while a SKILL script is running?

procedure(myproc()

   prog((myvars)

     hiDisplayAppDBox()    ; opens blank dialog box - no dboxText contents show until script completes!

     ....rest of SKILL code in script...launches child processes

   );prog

);proc

Learn about the challenges and solutions for integrating and verification PCIe(r) Gen4 into an Arm-Based Server SoC. Listen to this relatively short webinar by Arm and Cadence, as they describe the collaboration and results, including methodology and...(read more)

Cadence ® Spectre ® AMS Designer is a high-performance mixed-signal simulation system. The ability to use multiple engines, and drive from a variety of platforms enables you to "rev...

[[ Click on the title to access the full blog on the Cadence Community site. ]]

We're happy to have guest blogger Thorsten Dworzak, Principal Consultant at Verilab GmbH, describe how he added Specman/e syntax to Sublime Text 3:

According to the 2018 StackOverflow Developer Survey, the popularity of development environments (IDEs, Text Editors) among software developers shows the following ranking:

1. Visual Studio Code 34.9%
2. Visual Studio 34.3%
3. Notepad++ 34.2%
4. Sublime Text 28.9%
5. Vim 25.8%
6. IntelliJ 24.9%
7. Android Studio 19.3%
8. (DVT) Eclipse 18.9%
9. …

15. Emacs 4.1%

Of these, only Vim, (DVT) Eclipse, and Emacs support editing in e-language (at least, last time I checked). Kate, which comes with KDE and also has a Specman mode, is not on this list.

I started using Sublime Text 3 some time ago. It offers packages that support a number of programming languages.

Though there is an e-language syntax available from Tsvi Mostovicz, it is unfinished work, and there are many syntactic constructs are missing. So, I created a fork of his project and finished it (it will eventually be merged back here).

It is a never-ending task because my code base for testing is limited and e is still undergoing development. The project is available through ST3's Package Control and you can contribute to it via Github.

I am eagerly waiting for your pull requests and/or comments and contributions!

When you design a rigid-flex board, the focus is, of course, on the bend. Your design might be bend to install (stable flexion) - it will be bent only a few times while installing. Or it might be dynamic - it will be bent regularly. It's important to...(read more)

You must deal with many reports in your daily life – for your health, financial accounts, credit, your child’s academic records, and the count goes on. Ever noticed that these reports contain many details, most of which you don’t wa...(read more)

All engineers can enhance their mixed-signal low-power structural verification productivity by learning while doing with a PIEA RAK (Power Intent Export Assistant Rapid Adoption Kit). They can verify the mixed-signal chip by a generating macromodel for their analog block automatically, and run it through Conformal Low Power (CLP) to perform a low power structural check.  

The power structure integrity of a mixed-signal, low-power block is verified via Conformal Low Power integrated into the Virtuoso Schematic Editor Power Intent Export Assistant (VSE-PIEA). Here is the flow.

Applying the flow iteratively from lower to higher levels can verify the power structure.

Cadence customers can learn more in a Rapid Adoption Kit (RAK) titled IC 6.1.5 Virtuoso Schematic Editor XL PIEA, Conformal Low Power: Mixed-Signal Low Power Structural Verification.

• To read the overview presentation, click on following link: PIEA Overview
• To download this PIEA RAK click on following link: PIEA RAK Download

The RAK includes Rapid Adoption Kit with demo design (instructions are provided on how to setup the user environment). It Introduces the Power Intent Export Assistant (PIEA) feature that has been implemented in the Virtuoso IC615 release.  The power intent extracted is then verified by calling Conformal Low Power (CLP) inside the Virtuoso environment.

• Last Update: 11/15/2012.
• Validated with IC 6.1.5 and CLP 11.1

The RAK uses a sample test case to go through PIEA + CLP flow as follows:

• Setup for PIEA
• Perform power intent extraction
• CPF Import: It is recommended to Import macro CPF, as oppose to designing CPF for sub-blocks. If you choose to import design CPF files please make sure the design CPF file has power domain information for all the top level boundary ports
• Generate macro CPF and design CPF
• Perform low power verification by running CLP

It is also recommended to go through older RAKs as prerequisites.

• Conformal Low Power, RTL Compiler and Incisive: Low Power Verification for Beginners
• Conformal Low Power: CPF Macro Models
• Conformal Low Power and RTL Compiler: Low Power Verification for Advanced Users

To access all these RAKs, visit our RAK Home Page to access Synthesis, Test and Verification flow

Note: To access above docs, use your Cadence credentials to logon to the Cadence Online Support (COS) web site. Cadence Online Support website https://support.cadence.com/ is your 24/7 partner for getting help and resolving issues related to Cadence software. If you are signed up for e-mail notifications, you can receive new solutions, Application Notes (Technical Papers), Videos, Manuals, and more.

You can send us your feedback by adding a comment below or using the feedback box on Cadence Online Support.

Sumeet Aggarwal

DAC is right around the corner! On the demo floor at Cadence® Booth #2214, we will demonstrate how to use the Cadence mixed-signal and low-power solution to design, verify, and implement a microcontroller-based mixed-signal design. The demo design architecture is very similar to practical designs of many applications like power management ICs, automotive controllers, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Cadene tools demonstrated in this design include Virtuoso® Schematic Editor, Virtuoso Analog Design Environment, Virtuoso AMS Designer, Virtuoso Schematic Model Generator, Virtuoso Power Intent Assistant, Incisive® Enterprise Simulator with DMS option, Virtuoso Digital Implementation, Virtuoso Layout Suite, Encounter® RTL Compiler, Encounter Test, and Conformal Low Power. An extended version of this demo will also be shown at the ARM® Connected Community Pavilion Booth #921.

For additional highlights on Cadence mixed-signal and low-power solutions, stop by our booth for:

• The popular book, Mixed-signal Methodology Guide, which will be on sale during DAC week!
• A sneak preview of the eBook version of the Mixed-signal Methodology Guide
• Customer presentations at the Cadence DAC Theater
  • 9am, Tuesday, June 4  ARM  Low-Power Verification of A15 Hard Macro Using CLP 
  • 10:30am, Tuesday, June 4  Silicon Labs  Power Mode Verification in Mixed-Signal Chip
  • 12:00pm, Tuesday, June 4  IBM  An Interoperable Flow with Unified OA and QRC Technology Files
  • 9am, Wednesday, June 5  Marvell  Low-Power Verification Using CLP
  • 4pm, Wednesday, June 5  Texas Instruments  An Inter-Operable Flow with Unified OA and QRC Technology Files
• Partner presentations at the Cadence DAC Theater
  • 10am, Monday, June 3  X-Fab  Rapid Adoption of Advanced Cadence Design Flows Using X-FAB's AMS Reference Kit
  • 3:30pm, Monday, June 3  TSMC TSMC Custom Reference Flow for 20nm -  Cadence Track
  • 9:30am,Tuesday, June 4  TowerJazz   Substrate Noise Isolation Extraction/Model Using Cadence Analog Flow
  • 12:30pm, Wednesday, June 5  GLOBALFOUNDRIES  20nm/14nm Analog/Mixed-signal Flow
  • 2:30pm, Wednesday, June 5  ARM  Cortex®-M0 and Cortex-M0+: Tiny, Easy, and Energy-efficient Processors for Mixed-signal Applications
• Technology sessions at suites
  • 10am, Monday, June 3    Low-power Verification of Mixed-signal Designs
  • 2pm, Monday, June 3      Advanced Implementation Techniques for Mixed-signal Designs
  • 2pm, Monday, June 3      LP Simulation: Are You Really Done?
  • 4pm, Monday, June 3      Power Format Update: Latest on CPF and IEEE 1801  
  • 11am, Wednesday, June 5   Mixed-signal Verification
  • 11am, Wednesday, June 5   LP Simulation: Are You Really Done?
  • 4pm, Wednesday, June 5   Successful RTL-to-GDSII Low-Power Design (FULL)
  • 5pm, Wednesday, June 5   Custom/AMS Design at Advanced Nodes

We will also have three presentations at the Si2 booth (#1427):

• 10:30am, Monday, June 3   An Interoperable Implementation Solution for Mixed-signal Design
• 11:30am, Tuesday, June 4   Low-power Verification for Mixed-signal Designs Using CPF
• 10:30am, Wednesday, June 5   System-level Low-power Verification Using Palladium

We have a great program at DAC. Click the link for complete Cadence DAC Theater and Technology Sessions. Look forward to seeing you at DAC!     

Hello, i saw that MAESTRO is a plotting addon is it a part of ADE EXPLORER?

i cant see the relation between the two.i started to read manual and regarding MAESTRO i only see code.

is there some simple examples?
Thanks.

Hello , i am trying to extract netlist from a circuit  in assembler

I have found the manual shown bellow , however there is no such option in tools in assembler.

how do i view the NETLIST of this circuit?

Thanks.

ASSEMBLER VIEW menu

Hello

The document I referenced is https://filebox.ece.vt.edu/~symort/rfworkshop/Mixer_workshop_instruction.pdf. (This is cadence workshop document)

While following the pxf simulation in the above article, the results are different and I have a question.

My result picture is shown below.

<my result error>

<document result>

<my direct plot>

<document direct plot>

The difference with the documentation is that in the direct plot screen after the pxf simulation,

1.output harmonics-> input sideband

2.Frequency axis: out-> frequency axis: absin

3.The results for port0 (RF port) are also different (see photo below).

4.The frequency values in the box are different.

My screen shows 5G, 10G, 1K ~ 10M, but the document is the same as 1K ~ 10M.

Ask for a solution. Thank you.

Hi all,

What is the most accurate way to simulate the gm of  RF transistors (RF stage) of an active mixer (single balanced or Gilbert cell)?

I tried to simulate it with many ways such as:

1. DC annotation (but of course its incorrect due to the switching operation of the mixer)

2. d(i_ds)/d(v_gs) using HB analysis and then taking the value at zero (since it is a DC characteristic). In this way I chose in the simulator results of HB: Voltage, spectrum, rms, magnitude. 

3. Using the OP, OPT buttons in the calculator and then extracting the gm of the transistor. 

The problem is that each way gives a different value which makes the procedure of designing an active mixer very difficult. In addition, when I simulate the voltage conversion gain of the active mixer and trying to compare it to the formula (2/pi)*gm*RL (either in linear or dB), I get numbers which are way too far from simulations. I understand that I would not get the same results but not different by hundreds percent. 

I see in many publications that people are plotting graphs of mixer's gm vs. different parameters and starting to doubt whether the results are correct.

I would appreciate any help,

Thanks in advance

Hi all,

I am having trouble plotting the IIp3 of gilber RF mixer I made

I have plotted 1 dB compression point using QPSS and QPAC simulation. flo=2.42GHz and frf=2.4GHz , 20 MHz IF

However my IIp3 simulation shows strange results

QPSS and QPAC setup

Hello, i managed to extract my S-param data into vcsv file,however i need a standart S2P file

i have this table displayed, as shown bellow.
is there a way to extract s2p file in cadence virtuoso?
Thanks.

I am trying to understand why axlDBTextBlockCompact(nil) on my test case says it can compact the text blocks down to 38, whereas I find only a total of 26 unique text block references in axlDBGetDesign()->text, axlDBGetDesign()->symbols and axlDBGetDesign()->symdefs. Where else are text blocks used besides these three?

Currently I tried this:

axlDBCreateShape(recPolyPlanes t "BOUNDARY/L02" netName sym1)

I get a atom error on car(sym1)

I can do this "static" using ETCH/L02 with out an issue, but I am trying to avoid doing an axlShapeChangeDynamicType().

Thanks,

Jerry

Hi all,

I am creating shapes on plane layers for a coupon and want to void them using axlShapeAutoVoid()

The shapes are attached to a symbol.

I've tried using axlShapeAutoVoid, but this only voids the pins, not the route keepouts created by nc_backdrill.

I also tried selecting the shape, individually, then running axlShapeAutoVoid. That was unsuccessful, also.

planeShapes is a list of shapes I created. The code for voiding:

;run backdrill to get route keepouts
axlShell("setwindow pcb;backdrill setup ;setwindow form.nc_backdrill;FORM nc_backdrill apply ;FORM nc_backdrill close")

foreach(sHape planeShapes
axlShapeAutoVoid(car(sHape))
)

Hi,

I've vhdl block containing fsm . IMC not able to auto extract the state machine coded like this:

There is a intermediate state state_mux  between next_state & state.

Pls. help in guiding IMC how to recognize this FSM coding style? 

Snipped of the fsm code:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

               type state_type is (ST_IDLE, ST_ADDRESS, ST_ACK_ADDRESS, ST_READ, ST_ACK_READ, ST_WRITE, ST_ACK_WRITE, ST_IDLE_BYTE);

               signal state : state_type;

               signal state_mux : state_type;

               signal next_state : state_type;

process(state_mux, start)

         begin

               next_state <= state_mux;

               next_count <= (others => '0');

           case (state_mux) is

                 when ST_IDLE => 

                            if(start = '1') then

                                 next_state <= ST_ADDRESS;

                              end if;

            when ST_ADDRESS =>

   …………….

          when others => null;

         end case;

     end process;

process(scl_clk_n, active_rstn)

               begin

                      if(active_rstn = '0') then

                           state <= ST_IDLE after delay_f;

                  elsif(scl_clk_n'event and scl_clk_n = '1') then

                             state <= next_state after delay_f;

                            end if;

end process;

process(state, start)

               begin

                     state_mux <= state;

               if(start = '1') then

                       state_mux <= ST_IDLE;

                              end if;

               end process;

Thanks

Raghu

I have a problem connected with my AXI4 coverage.

I enable coverage collection in AXI4 

      set_config_int("axi4_active_slave_agent_0.monitor.coverModel", "burst_started_enable", 1);
      set_config_int("axi4_active_slave_agent_0.monitor.coverModel", "coverageEnable", 1);

but i don't have a result.

I think the problem in Callback, but i try to connect all callback and i don't have positive result.

Can you help me?

Hi all,

I need to develop a digital design/verification solution to compile,elaborate and simulate SV designs (basically a complex xrun wrapper). I am an experienced user of xrun and I have done a number of these wrappers over the years but this one is to be more of a tool, intented to be used Company-wise, so it needs to be very well thought and engineered.

It needs to be robust, simple and extensible. It needs to support multi-snapshot elaboration, run regressions on machine farms, collect coverage, create reports, etc.

I've been browsing the vast amount of documentation on XCELIUM and, although very good, I can't find any document which puts together all the pieces of what I am trying to achieve. I suppose I am more clear on the elaboration, compilation and simulation part but I am really lacking on the other areas like : LSF, regressions coverage, where does vManager fits in all this, etc.

I'd appreciate if someone can comment on whether there is a document which depicts how such a DV flow can be put together from scratch, or whether there is a kind of RAK with some example xrun wrapper.

Thanks

xmsim is not exiting the simulation for this error. It is unusual for the simulator to not exit for an error. I have just started using uvm and this is occurring during the randomization step for a sequencer item.

xmsim: *E,RNDCNSTE

I am using -EXIT on the command line.

I am using Xcelium 19.03-s013.

Any insights are appreciated. Thanks.

-Jim

Hi All,

I want to capture the transition values of certain nodes in a design (i.e. a digital multiplier built with standard cells) and I use probe -screen command to dump the nodal values in text format. Since I only need to capture these values in the ideal situation, I use -nospecify switch with the xrun command :

xrun -clean R16FA_2009.v R4BE_Test.v tb_stop16.v -v stdlib_verilog_models-sdf30.v -access +rwc -mess -timescale 1ns/1ps -nospecify -gui &

and the probe command goes like this : 

probe -screen tb_stop16.mul16.test.L1 -redirect probe1.txt -format "%T L1 Value: %b"  //Here L1 is an array of wires

Although I expect a single transition at a given time instance, I see multiple transitions occurring in the dumped probe1.txt file. i.e. 

Time: 300 PS : 48'bxx0xx0xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx0xx0xx11x
Time: 300 PS : 48'b000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000110
Time: 4 NS : 48'b001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000100
Time: 4 NS : 48'b011000000010111111111001000000110011011001010101
Time: 8 NS : 48'b010000000010111111111001000000110011011001010101
Time: 8 NS : 48'b110100101100000110000111100001010010111001011100
Time: 12 NS : 48'b010000110011100010001110011100010101010001010101
Time: 16 NS : 48'b000010000010000000000000000010000000010010010100
Time: 20 NS : 48'b000011000010000000000000000010000000010010010100
Time: 20 NS : 48'b000001001001001001011011000010001010011010010100

From the waveform, it appears that only the second value (bold)  of the time instance is correct. Since the simulation is without annotated delays, there are no intermediate transitions in the waveform. How could this be possible ?

Thanks in advance

Hi,

I found a basic Specman E/Verilog program at http://www.asic-world.com/examples/specman/memory.html and I would like to run it through a vsif file, with vManager.

I'm able to run it, without problems, with this command : xrun -Q -unbuffered '-timescale' '1ns/1ns' '-access' '+rw' memory_tb.v mem_tb_top.e test_write_read_all.e.

I wrote a first vsif which look like this:

---- vm_basic.vsif -----

session vm_basic {
        top_dir : /home/cadence/xrunTest/;
        output_mode: terminal;
};

group basic {
        test test {
                run_script: xrun -Q -unbuffered '-timescale' '1ns/1ns' '-access' '+rw' memory_tb.v mem_tb_top.e test_write_read_all.e
        };
};

----------------------------

This solution didn't work due to the prompt change with xrun, and I have no clue how to manage this issue.

Have you any idea?

Best regards,

Yohan

Hi,

I am facing this elaboration error when using Xcelium:

Command>

    xmverilog -v200x +access+r +xm64bit -f vlist -reflib plib -timescale 1ns/1ps

Log>

    xmelab: *E,CUVMUR (<name>.v,538|18): instance 'LUTP0.C GLAT3' of design unit 'tlatntscad12' is unresolved in 'worklib.LUTP0:v'.

I guess the plib was not referred to as the simulation configuration because the tlatntscad12 is included in plib.

The plib is compiled by INCISIVE 13.20 and I am using the Xcelium 19.30.

Please tell me the correct command on how to refer to the library directory compiled by different versions.

Thank you,

Specman *search* command allows searching in all loaded modules, but only for a string.

Is there a way to search for a regexp or glob?

Alternatively, is there a way to simply get a list of all loaded files somehow? Then I could use either the "shell" command, or real shell together with grep.

Thanks

I'm trying to compile a simple verilog file using xmvlog. I run the following command,

"xmvlog myfile.v"

Then I get the following error,

"xmvlog: *F,DIRDEC: Can't save decompressed versions of compressed files."

I used to use xmvlog with no issues, this error started to come up now. The message is not helpful either. How can I solve this?

I appreciate any help, thanks in advance.

hi,

due to technical problem i am running simulation through terminal. Therefore, I have a Verilog file, a test bench and i have also exported from Genus synthesized netlist and sdf file. Now, how can i annotate sdf in my post-synthesis simulation using XCELIUM while using command line?

thank you

Sample clues

18 across: Makoto Hagiwara and David Jung both claim to have invented it (7,6)

1 down: French impressionist who rejected that term (5)

3 down: Artificial surface used for playing hockey (9)

7 down: The sequel to Iliad (7)

12 down: Adipose tissue (4,3)

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6 across: Franchise revived by Frank Miller (6)

13 across: What Keanu Reeves and Zayed Khan have in common (5)

18 across: What Frank Sinatra and George Clooney have in common (6,6)

19 across: Dosa mix, for example (6)

2 down: Green, in a non-environmental way (7)

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Sample clues

5 down: Torso covering (6)

7 down: Government by rogues (12)

15 across: eBay speciality (7)

18 across: Demonic (8)

20 across: Common language (6,6)

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Sample clues

17 across: Beckham speciality (4,4)

4 down: Havana speciality (5)

19 across: Infamous 1988 commercial against Michael Dukakis (9,4)

11 down: Precisely (2,3,3)

13 down: City infamously ransacked by the Japanese in 1937 (7)

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Sample clues

11 across: Chandigarh’s is 0172 (3,4)

21 across: He’s a loser, baby (4)

1 down: Garment meant to shape the torso (6)

12 down: It’s slogan: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit” (8)

18 down: Noise made by badminton players? (6)

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Sample clues

5 across: The US president’s bird (3,5,3)

11 down: Group once known as the Quarrymen (7)

10 across: Cavalry sword (5)

19 across: Masonic ritual (5,6)

1 down: Pioneer of Ostpolitik (6)

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