sev and asi functions

Greetings everyone,

Has anyone in this forum used the "sev" and "asi" functions to set up
and submit a simulation to Spectre?. I was able to open a schematic, started
Analog Artist and do some simple setup for a transient simulation. When I
tried to shut Analog Artist down via SKILL script (sevQuit), I get the
following error,

*Error* slotValue: no such slot - sevSession
*Error* slotValue: no such slot - schematic

I am also having a difficult time trying to get to the form to turn on a
simulation type (enable it). I have search Openbook and SourceLink and I
could not find a way to get the value of "r_form" variable to feed to the
following function,

asiSetFormFieldVal( r_form s_fieldName g_value )

I know Ocean could be used to setup a simulation but it is command prompt
based. I would like to drive things through the GUI. Is this proposal even
feasible?.

Thanks in advance

Jon

 

Hello Jon,
I have done a lot with asi functions... but I used them just to
query all the settings of the Artist session and used it, together
with informations from my own GUI's to write special Ocean scripts...

It is not too difficult - 100..200 lines of code and you have your own
ocean script compiler ;-))

Huge advantage - Oceanscrips could be dispatched on other machines or started
in background - your Artist session not.

But Oceanscrips could also be loaded from icfb... just the design() command
needs then (lib cell view) arguments...

Greetings,
Sylvio

 

Jon:
sevQuit() is not looking for the asiSession but rather the sevSession.

sevQuit(hiGetCurrentWindow()~>sevSession) when the ADE window is
active seems to work.

Note that if you have the sevSession you can get the asiSession with:
sevEnvironment(sevSession)

Why is there no way to to get the sevSession from the asiSession?

 

Could you give us some sample code to run ocean from icfb?
All I want to do is to run simulation from schematics window in one
step, without first creating netlist and then load a ocean script.

Thanks.

 

Erik,

I am new to the "sev" and "asi" functions and I can't say I can
differentiate an asiSession from a sevSession. It actually took me a while
to figure out the difference between a "dd" object versus a "db" object.
Cadence, unfortunately, has not include much information or examples on how
to utilize the "asi" and "sev" functions in their documentation. It seems to
me that these functions are, perhaps, obscure and not many people include
them in their scripts. Using "asi" and "sev" as keyword in search engines
reveals only minscule amount of useful information. Does anyone know other
web links that provide more detail and perhaps sample code of these
functions. I have tried Cadence's SourceLink and it is not much better
there.

Jon

 

Instead of using design("/path/to/netlist") use:

design("libName" "cellName" "viewName")

This will renetlist as needed. Note, this only works in DFII, an dnot
in the standalone "ocean" executable.

Regards,

Andrew.

 

Have you looked in the Analog Design Environment SKILL manual? (can't
remember exactly what it is called off the top of my head).

Mind you, these functions are mainly intended for simulator
integrators, not as a means of scripting simulations. That is what
OCEAN is for. Is there a good reason why you can't use OCEAN?

 

Andrew,
Simulator integrators do not use sourcelink ? What kind of documentation comes
with oasis ?

It is also interesting for the end user to know how netlisting occurs. There are
so many of these "se" "ise" "oss" "sev" "asi" "hnl" "fnl", oasis, aucore, the
cdf matters, the distinction between sockets and direct netlisting ...
Whenever there are documents that give an overview of how this all interacts, I
am interested.

 

Hi Jon,
to run an ocean script
just load("/path/oceanScript")

To create a script look at the sample code
It is not complete (I should not put complete solutions here ;-),
but it contains the most important parts to transfer the
analysis setup to Ocean script.
missing: model/input files, saveOptions, inital conditions envOptions...
There are asi functions to query all of them.

Greetings,
Sylvio

code example to generate ocean scripts:

session = asiGetSession( mySchematicWindow )

fprintf(oceanScript "simulator( '%s )\n\n" asiGetSimName(session))
fprintf(oceanScript "design( %L %L %L )\n" form->libName->value form->cellName->value form->viewName->value )

enabledAnalysisL = setof( ana asiGetAnalysisNameList(session) asiGetAnalysis(session ana)->enable)
foreach( analysisSymb enabledAnalysisL
analysis = asiGetAnalysis(session analysisSymb)

cmdArgs = list(analysisSymb)

;;analysis field values
foreach( item asiGetAnalysisFieldList(analysis)
name = item~>name
value = item~>value

if( or( type(value) == 'string && value != ""
value == t || value == nil
) then
cmdArgs = append( cmdArgs list(concat("?" name) value) )
)
)

;;analysis option values
foreach( option asiGetAnalysisOptionList(analysis)
name = option->name
value = option->value

if( or( type(value) == 'string && value != ""
value == t || value == nil
) then
cmdArgs = append( cmdArgs list(concat("?" name) value) )
) ; ** if or **
)

tmp = substring(sprintf(nil "%L" cdr(cmdArgs)) 2)
fprintf(oceanScript "analysis( '%s %s\n" car(cmdArgs) tmp)
)

;;################ initialize design variables
foreach( item asiGetDesignVarList(session)
name = car(item)
value = cadr(item)

fprintf(oceanScript "\ndesVar( %L %L )\n" name value)
)

...

 

Hi Sylvio,

Thanks for the code snipplet !. I'll start with what you have listed
below and tailor it for my own usage. Even if I cannot get the "sev" and
"asi" functions to do 100% of what I want, I'll make-do with whatever I can
get. I am wondering if Cadence is considering ways for users to drive Analog
Artist via SKILL or the Spectre simulator with Perl/shell/Tcl/Python/etc...
scripts?. From my limited experience with Ocean, it appears to lack the kind
of flexibility that more power scripting languages such as Perl has to
offers (IMHO, of course).

Jon

form->cellName->value form->viewName->value )

asiGetAnalysis(session ana)->enable)

 

When I was looking for a way to bind netlist and run to a bindkey, my
first stop was cdsFinder. Searched for functions containing the word
"netlist". I then went to cdsdoc and searched for the function name,
and in the skartistref.pdf there was not very much information on how
to use the functions.

As Andrew says, these functions are for integrators, but integrators
are not users, at least not in large companies. There is a central CAD
department somewhere that writes integration packages, but these guys
don'f have to use their own tools. I have gathered a bit of experience
in SKILL over the years and I find it useful to write my own snippets
of code to make my work easier. But I find it very much frustrating
finding the pieces of information that I need about some of the
functions, as they are scattered across many documents.

How about having a wiki on SKILL programming? Then some of the
questions and answers showing up here could be gathered in a searchable
environment with possiblitites for extensions as users get more "warm"
on programming. I have had very good experience with wikis regarding
knowledge sharing. It won't remove the need for comp.cad.cadence as a
central place for questions and answers.

 

I would be very enthusiastic about a wiki. Especially if it has the goal
you mention: SKILL programming with an interest in
productivity/usability improvements. But we would need some indications
about what is OK there and what is frowned upon by CDS. It would be a
shame to put effort in something that is not well seen because it is too
much out of control.
There was an initiative of a SKILL website with subscription in this
group before. I don t know how well it worked.

 

The best thing would be if Cadence hosted it or arranged that one of the
more stable designer sites out there started one.

And more important: What implementation should be used in order to keep
people coming back to contribute. There are so many different brands out
there.

 

Jon,

OCEAN _is_ SKILL. It's just an API, with a set of simply named functions
for controlling and analysing simulations. There is nothing to stop you using
the OCEAN API in conjunction with other SKILL code. SKILL is a very rich
and powerful language, certainly far more powerful than other scripting
languages such as Tcl and Bourne shell, and it's a proper language rather
than just a "scripting" language. Now Tcl and Bourne shell have their place,
as does perl, but I would say that SKILL offers a lot of flexibility. Note, I
don't want this to be a religous language war when I say these things; I
program in lots of different langauges, including those you mention, and I
recognise that some are good for particular tasks.

The one area where perl wins over SKILL is in ascii file I/O and pattern
matching (which is what perl was for originally, to be honest), but I do have
a PCR in to improve the pattern matching in SKILL.

Regards,

Andrew.

 

Hey Erik,

You probably know this already, but you can find the sevSession from
an asiSession indirectly with the following:

procedure( GimmeSevSessionForASISession(asiSession)
prog( nil
foreach( sevSession GimmeAllSevSessions()
when( sevEnvironment(sevSession) == asiSession
return(sevSession)
)
)
return(nil)
)
)

procedure( GimmeAllSevSessions()
let( (winList sevSession sessionList)
winList = hiGetWindowList()

foreach( win winList

sevSession = sevSession(win)
when( sevSession
sessionList = cons(sevSession sessionList)
)
)
reverse(sessionList)
)
)


Rob