Preserving pins in stream in

Hi!

We're trying to stream in a layout created in seultra. However, in the
stream in all pins are gone. We've placed and routed a 64-bit adder so it
would be quite frustrating to add all of the pins by hand. Isn't it
possible to get the pins created in seultra into cadence icfb?

Thanks!

/Torgny Johansson

 

I'm not an expert on preserving pins in stream but it's a common
question (search the comp.cad.cadence archives). Quite a few people
have written solutions for creation of pins where stream doesn't have
them.

I've personally submitted a few enhancement requests on designers'
behalf, based solely on the posts I've seen to comp.cad.cadence. Some
of my enhancement requests have been added to the later versions of
DFII (nobody on earth has filed as many product-change-requests as I
have ... over 6,000 -- more than two product change requests a day for
every day in the last decade ... although Gilles & Andrew and a few
others are contenders for the top title).

So, check out the create-pin-from-label enhancemnts on later versions
of DFII.

However, if that's not enough for you, ask your support personnel for a
sanitized copy of my PCR 479545, titled:
Request Virtuoso create pin include this new functionality enhancement
Tell them to contact me and I'll clean it of Customer data & send it to
them, if necessary, to forward to you. This PCR contains a SKILL
prototype which creates pins from label origins of the size &
rectilinear shape of the complete metal layers texted, within the
boundaries of the cell, in a hierarchical design. This methododology
has certain advantages over other pin-creation programs which create
pins of static size based either on labels or on the label origin.

In addition, if either the new create-pin-from-label enhancements in
DFII don't work for you and the SKILL prototype to create pins of the
same size & shape as the metal layer being texted doesn't work, I've
collected the following create-pin SKILL programs (some from the
esteemed Andrew Beckett) which your sales & support folks can ask me to
send to you to test out:
ALCmakePin.il
AddTextToPins.il
AttachPins.il
BfChangePinByName.il
CELibChecker.il
DrMakePins.il
FixEdifInput.il
JayCreatePinOnLabel.il
MakeSimplePin.il
PCIallTextToPins.il
ReplaceShapeWithPin.il
PolygonToPin.il
PreAutoPrep.il
VjGdsiiLabels2Pins.il
abGenInstancePins.il
abStreamInCompassPin.il
abStreamInPin.il
absPinModel.il
acpdPreviewPinEditor.il
AddAbstractPin.il
lab2pin.il
etc.

In addition, be advised that in the other direction, from DFII out,
Andrew has added features to DFII which put pins in the GDSII (as pin
attributes, I think).

Hope this helps designers, our friends,
John Gianni

 

I just realized that there may be a BETTER way to solve your problem.

My last suggestion was coming from the perspective of most people who
start with a GDSII they didn't create (where they have to ADD a pin
which isn't there in the original GDSII).

However, you apparently have full CONTROL of the GDSII creation.

Therefore, if SE-Ultra can create the necessary GDSII pin-attributes,
perhaps that would be the cleanest solution overall.

Thanks to Andrew Beckett's 1996 PCR #184050, long ago DFII stream in
was enhanced to convert those pin attributes written by the place and
route tools back into pins in DFII for custom ic design.

Given that, I suggest you look up in the SE-Ultra documentation to see
if and how to output GDSII with the pin attributes included (and report
back to comp.cad.cadence).

Pin information is shown in the Stream file in the following sequence:
access_dir pinName terminalName direction [instName]

access_dir:
The access direction of the pin, which can be T for top, B for bottom,
L for left, and R for right. If the pin has more than one access
direction, the directions appear in the sequence TBLR. If the direction
is unknown, Export - Stream writes one blank character.

pinName:
Name of the pin.

terminalName:
Name of the terminal

direction:
Direction of the terminal.

Valid Values:
input, output, inputOutput, switch, jumper, unused, unknown

instName:
Optional value specifying the name of the pin instance.

 

Thanks alot!

I'll start looking into it now and I'll send a new reply when I'm
successful or when I've ripped all my hair off my head...

Regards
Torgny Johansson

 

You need to specify the pin layer specifically.

For example, use the following layer map for SE's export GDS:
12 met1 NET ;
12 met1 SPNET ;
35 met1 PIN ;
12 met1 VIA ;
Then, during stream-in to Opus, use the following layer map:
met1 pin 35 0
met1 drawing 12 0

thanks,
ronald