Virtuosity: In the Line of Veri-Fire - Episode 3

Hi readers! Welcome to Veri-Fire, a blog series that helps you deep dive into Virtuoso® ADE Verifier and learn about its various whys and hows. In this series, Walter Hartong, a Product Engineering Architect at Cadence, will be answering some frequently asked questions on Virtuoso ADE Verifier. Stay tuned for some interesting explanations and solutions! And if you have any specific questions in mind, feel free to send those to veri-fire@cadence.com.  
You can find most of the questions that come across to Walter on the Virtuoso ADE Verifier FAQ page, and the list might grow, depending on your questions ! 

After episode 1 and episode 2 of our Veri-Fire series, we are back with the third installment. In this episode, we have a few more answers for you. Let's check them out:

Pradeep: I understand the benefit of Virtuoso ADE Verifier but learning a new tool is always a challenge. Any experience how hard it is to get started?

Walter: As with every new tool it is an overhead - no doubt - but I think the threshold to get started with Virtuoso ADE Verifier is as low as it can be. The more you dive in, the more you will learn about its features and reap its benefits.

Check out this video that would also answer your question:

Ok, we have only scratched the surface in the video, but you have to admit that the start was easy - don't you? You can already run multiple Virtuoso ADE Assembler cellviews together and you can review all the results on one page - that is something to start with.

Camille: I would like to get started with Virtuoso ADE Verifier - what is the best approach?

Walter: I strongly recommend you to work through the Virtuoso ADE Verifier RAK. This might take a couple of hours but you will get an excellent overview of Virtuoso ADE Verifier, and I bet, it will be time well spent!

Doug: We track the verification progress of our project in Microsoft Excel. Why should we consider Virtuoso ADE Verifier?

Walter: Oh, tracking stuff in Microsoft Excel is great. We all love that . I would encourage you to continue this. But think about how much time it costs for every design to update the Microsoft Excel worksheet and still you are never sure that the current Microsoft Excel data really reflects the correct verification status. What would you think of a tool that can automate this step? You can guess which tool I'm talking about - Virtuoso ADE Verifier! 

I assume your Microsoft Excel worksheet is some sort of a verification plan - some people call it a simulation plan, status table, or something along the same lines. This means that the table contains a set of goals you want to reach. This is exactly what a 'requirement' is in Virtuoso ADE Verifier and the 'results' reflect your verification status.

I recommend that you import your Microsoft Excel sheet into Virtuoso ADE Verifier. This is an easy task and might require minimal reformatting. To import your worksheet into Virtuoso ADE Verifier, choose File -> Import -> File and point to your Microsoft Excel worksheet. I'm sure you will be able to import it. If not, ask for help from our support team.

Also check out the following video.

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Jordan: Are there good ways to discover if updates have been made to tests?  

Walter: I like that question because it is simple to answer . Any change in a Virtuoso ADE Assembler view is highlighted in the Virtuoso ADE Verifier user interface by showing an arrow icon in yellow against it, as shown in this  screenshot:

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This check is effectively performed at the system level, so not only test changes, but any change will be reported. For example, a modified specification, run mode, or history, will be reported as a change. Often these changes will not be relevant for Virtuoso ADE Verifier and it is perfectly fine to just continue without doing an update. When in doubt, just click the arrow icon to trigger an update in Virtuoso ADE Verifier. Otherwise, you can use the toolbar icon to update all implementations in one go.

Why don't we just update the implementations automatically if a change is detected? There are two reasons: First of all, performance. If you have hundreds of implementations in Virtuoso ADE Verifier and every designer in the team is modifying their Virtuoso ADE Assembler cellviews, Virtuoso ADE Verifier might spend a significant amount of time making unnecessary updates. The second reason is even more important: Assume that you are in the task of mapping something. You don't want Virtuoso ADE Verifier to 'flicker around' because someone in the team might be making updates in Virtuoso ADE Assembler. It is easier to have a dedicated time slot, controlled by you, to ensure when the updates should happen.

We hope that this episode of Veri-Fire helped in answering a few more of your questions. If not, you know where to contact us!  
Also, do check out the Related Resources section for more details. 

Related Resources

For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

About Virtuosity

Virtuosity has been our most viewed and admired blog series for a long time. The series has brought to the fore some less well-known yet very useful software and documentation improvements and has also shed light on some exciting new offerings in Virtuoso technology. This series broadcasts the voices of different bloggers and experts, who continue to preserve the legacy of Virtuosity and try to give new dimensions to it by covering topics across the length and breadth of the Virtuoso environment, and a lot more. To receive notifications about the new blogs in this series, click Subscribe and submit your email ID in the Subscriptions box.

Happy reading, and stay safe!

Team ADE Verifier