As expected, we didn’t see nearly the performance improvement on Windows that we did on Unix. Average speed improvement was probably 3% or less on our benchmark suite. However, the 64bit simulator is stillĂ‚Â useful when you’re working on a very large design that won’t compile or run within the memory limits of 32-bit Windows (either 2GB, generally).
In my last post, I discussed how the VeriLogger GUI can be configured to control different simulators. Today I’ll cover the executable programs used during a typical simulation run and how they communicate with each other.
It’s particularly important to note that these programs communicate via CORBA calls using network sockets, so any firewall software on your system needs to be configured to allow this communication. Please note that this “network communication” is all strictly local to the user’s computer: no internet activity is involved. Unfortunately, most windows-based firewalls do not, in their default configurations, differentiate between inter-process and inter-computer socket communication. Most firewalls will pop-up a warning when you build and run a simulation, and this is the the best time to allow the necessary socket access. However, there are some less commonly used firewalls that are not so friendly about notifying you when it begins blocking communications.
Syncad.exe, the BugHunter debugging GUI, is the program that the user typically interacts with. Syncad.exe launches simwrapd.exe when you first build a project by pressing the yellow “Build” button. Simwrapd.exe is a “simulation wrapper” that translates commands back and forth between the debugger GUI and the simulator, so that the debugger doesn’t need to know details of which simulator is being used. Simwrapd also theoretically allows remote simulations to be run transparently by the user, but this feature is not yet enabled in current versions of BugHunter.
Simwrapd, in turn, starts a simulator executable (vlogcmd.exe or simx.exe, for example). When
simx.exe (the VeriLogger Extreme command line simulator) is run, it then runs another exe called simxgen.exe. Simxgen is the “simulation generator” that compiles these user’s code to an simulation executable file called simxsim.exe. Simxsim.exe is then run to actually compute the results of the simulation.
All the above executables except simxsim.exe are located in the SynaptiCAD/bin directory. Unlike the other exe files, simxsim.exe is not shipped with the product, but is instead created based on the user’s source files, so it is generated into the project directory where the user’s project file (.hpj) is located.
Simxsim.exe is the simulation exe that gets run when you press one of the green “Run” buttons.
The socket communication channels when using VeriLogger Extreme are as follows:
syncad.exe <->simwrapd.exe
simwrapd.exe<->simxsim.exe
syncad.exe<->simxsim.exe
The socket communication channels when using the older vlogcmd simulation are as follow:
syncad.exe <->simwrapd.exe
simwrapd.exe<->vlogcmd.exe
syncad.exe<->vlogcmd.exe
The key difference, however, between simxsim.exe and vlogcmd.exe is that a new simxsim.exe is created with every compile and it is created in the project directory, whereas there’s only one vlogcmd.exe and it’s always located in SynaptiCAD/bin (because it’s an interpreted simulator, not a compiled one).
In this blog, I’ll be discussing the evolving architecture of VeriLogger, as well as sharing tips on how to get the most out of the environment. Today I’ll be discussing ways to change what simulator is used by the Verilogger environment to simulate a design.
VeriLogger actually consists of two separate programs: BugHunter Pro , a graphical debugger/testbench generator (executable filename is syncad.exe) and a Verilog simulator. The default Verilog simulator used by BugHunter is SynaptiCAD’s Sim Extreme, a compiled-code Verilog 2001 simulator (executable filename is simx.exe).
BugHunter supports debugging with all the major Verilog and VHDL simulators and it can be easily configured via the GUI to swap out which simulator it uses for performing simulations. In Verilog, it’s fairly easy to accidentally introduce race conditions into your code that will cause simulation output to be different across different simulators, so it’s not a bad idea when you have access to multiple simulators to run your design through multiple simulators and compare the output. This is particularly important when you’re creating IP that is going to customers who may use a different simulator than you used to design your IP.
The first way to set the simulator used by BugHunter is via the command line when BugHunter is started. For example:
syncad -p bhp -S verilogger_extreme
launches the product BugHunter (-p bhp) with the verilog_extreme simulator as the default simulator for new projects.
To override the above default setting for new projects using the GUI, select the menu option Project>Default Project Simulation Properties, click the Settings Template radio button, select the Verilog tab, then set the Simulator Type to the desired simulator.
To change the simulator used for an existing project, select the menu option Project>Project Simulation Properties, click the Verilog tab, and pick the desired simulator from the Simulator Type control.
Debugging information such as breakpoints and which signals to watch in the waveform window are stored in a simulator-independent format inside your project, so this information is portable across simulators. Common compilation options such as include and library paths are also stored in a portable format.
Project files can store multiple configurations, with each configuration storing a list of settings on how to compile the project (what compiler to use and what compilation options). Configurations make it easy to switch between simulators or to simply switch between a “debug simulation” where you build a slower simulation that is fully debuggable versus a “fast simulation” that runs quickly but doesn’t make as much debug info accessible. To create a configuration, use the Project Simulation Properties to set the desired simulator and compilation options, then press the Add button to create the new configuration and give it a name.