ASIC/FPGA Design and Verification Out Source Services

A note about the TCL file and generating waves

1. I use the following TCL script to record waves. A verification engineer usually would record signals in the test-bench, in order to verify that primary inputs/outputs are driven and collected properly:
using the command

probe -create -shm -var -all -depth 1

To direct the SHM/VCD to a directory use the following command:

database -open -shm /proj/psv_nobackup/my_dir_a_il_vmanager/pini.shm
probe -database /proj/psv_nobackup/my_dir_a_il_vmanager/pini.shm -create -shm -var -all -depth 15

When you source a configuration file, .sv or .svcf, it may not work properly. I have found out that the name of the file and name in configuration file data base has to be the same. This is shown in the following text. In this case the data base in the configuration has to be my_wave_name.
#
# databases
#
database require my_wave_name -search {
  ../../../../../../../psv_nobackup/my_dir_a_il_vmanager/my_wave_name.shm/my_wave_name.trn
  /proj/psv_nobackup/my_dir_a_il_vmanager/my_wave_name.shm/my_wave_name.trn
}

Break points can added also in the TCL file with specman prefix sn:
sn break on line 131 in @pk_packet


2. The user would than type at the simulation command line:
run;exit


3. I generate waves using the simulator native SHM format because it is faster than VCD. To view it, I usually convert the SHM waves to VCD (Exporting simvision TRN to VCD) and use free tools like GTKWAVE.


4. For regression one might be interesting in running without wave recording. So the probe command would be replaced with the run; exit commands in the TCL command file.


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6. For debug with specman,where I use reload and restart frequently, I use the following commands:
   
   database -open pini.shm
   probe -database pini.shm -create -shm -var -all -depth 8
   #database -close pini.shm
   

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