Virtuosity: The Latest Virtuoso ADE Usability Enhancements

8 Jun 2020 • 9 minute read

We live in a world where the idea of usability is to make products easy to use, make things easily accessible, and visually appealing. It's our constant endeavor to improve the usability of our products. Watch out this space for our posts every month on usability enhancements in Virtuoso.

Since Virtuoso® Layout Suite IC6.1.8/ICADVM18.1 were released, we have continued our drive to improve the usability of Virtuoso ADE Assembler, Virtuoso ADE Explorer, and Virtuoso Visualization and Analysis.

I'll summarize the biggest enhancements in this blog.

Virtuoso ADE GUI

Enhancements to the Virtuoso ADE GUI

We have added the ability to control which columns you see in the Outputs Setup tab for Virtuoso ADE Assembler. Just set the cdsenv below to the ones you'd like to see.

envSetVal("maestro.assembler" "defaultOutputColumns" 'string "\"Test\" \"Type\" \"Details\" \"Plot\" \"Save\"")

Controlling the Color of the Pass/Fail Results

New .cdsenv environment variables have been added to allow you to control the color of the text of the Pass/Fail results in Virtuoso ADE Assembler or Virtuoso ADE Explorer. Here's how you can use the environment variables:

To change the color of Pass results to blue:

envSetVal("maestro.gui" "textColorForSpecPassInResults" 'string "blue")

To change the color of Near results to purple:

envSetVal("maestro.gui" "textColorForSpecNearInResults" 'string "purple")

To change the color of Fail results to pink:

envSetVal("maestro.gui" "textColorForSpecFailInResults" 'string "pink")

Plot Associated Signals

To improve performance, when you add an expression that uses other signals, Virtuoso ADE automatically saves that signal, but it will not display it in the Results tab by default.

In this example, many of the expressions are built up using signals.

After simulation completes, you can right-click on the result and choose to plot particular or all associated signals.

Manual Edits to the Virtuoso ADE Outputs

We've made it easier to directly edit outputs in Virtuoso ADE. It's easier to copy and paste a signal, and if you copy and paste a terminal, then the Terminal Selection Type is honored so that a current, voltage, or both will be saved or plotted. Also, if you add a signal that does not exist in the schematic, then this is highlighted in the outputs.

Corner Setup form in Sync with Data View

This isn't new, but it came up recently, so I thought it might be useful to you. If you have the Corners Setup form open and you create, copy, or remove a corner using the right-click options in the Data View or Setup assistant, then the Corners Setup form is not updated.

But, if you set the autoCornerUpdate. environment variable, the Corner Setup form will keep in sync with the addition or removal of corners from the Data View/Setup Assistant.

envSetVal("adexl.gui" "autoCornerUpdate" 'boolean t)

Terminal Voltages and Currents

You're bound to have noticed that we now support probing of terminal voltages, and that now the Signal Type in the Outputs displays whether this signal is a current or a voltage. This is explained in one of my previous blogs Virtuosity: The top 3 Post-Layout Enhancements in Analog Design Environment and in my RAK Working with DSPF Files in Post-Layout Flows in Virtuoso ADE Explorer and Virtuoso ADE Assembler.

You can see how this is now shown in the Outputs setup.

Exporting Simulation Results in a Pivot Ready Format

Simulation results can now be exported from Virtuoso ADE to a pivot ready format to be used in Excel. There's a great video to show you the flow. Take a look at the Exporting Simulation Results in a Pivot Ready Format video to find out more.

Hyperlinks in the Spectre Netlist

Having the hyperlinks in the Spectre log files was a big hit, so we've added hyperlinks to the Spectre netlist too. You can now click on the hyperlinks to open included files such as DSPF, .scs, .lib, .vcd and many more.

Migrating Virtuoso ADE XL Views

There's now an option to copy the histories over to Virtuoso ADE Assembler when you migrate your old Virtuoso ADE XL views. Maybe you don't want to copy the histories over to conserve disk space, or maybe you do so you can view old simulation results in Virtuoso ADE Assembler.

Virtuoso ADE Waveform Window

You've been able to add custom functions to the calculator through the template builder for some time now, but it only supported files with the .il extension. Now we have enhanced this to also read scripts written in SKILL++ with the .ils extension. Just point the Add Custom Calculator Function form to a .ils file and the rest of the flow is the same. If you want a refresher about adding custom calculator functions, then read my blog Virtuosity: Sharing Custom SKILL Calculator Functions. Remember, you can also download custom calculator functions from the Cadence Support portal. It's worth checking there before writing your own. Feel free to add any of your own scripts via the Contribute Content button.

Smart View

There is a new option on the Display Parasitics form when viewing Smart Views to allow you to show the node names on the net fragments in the layout. Just select Node Name from the form and when you highlight parasitics and zoom in, you will see the node names for each fragment.

If you missed my previous blog Virtuosity: A Smart Extracted View and are not familiar with the Cadence Quantus Smart View, it is the next generation of the Extracted View in the Virtuoso environment. Smart View uses a highly efficient and scalable storage mechanism. This means that Smart View can manage larger, more complex designs at advanced nodes with a reduced overall extraction run time and netlist size. In fact, Smart View not only helps with faster netlist generation in Virtuoso ADE Assembler and Virtuoso ADE Explorer, you can also use it to view the parasitics in the layout within a desired threshold and also their net fragment names. You can also use the Smart View properties to analyze values and connectivity details of extracted parasitic elements.

Click here to download the Using Quantus Smart View in the Virtuoso Analog Design Environment Rapid Adoption Kit, or search for it on Cadence Online Support.

Stay tuned to find out the newest features and enhancements that will be coming soon.

Related Resources

Rapid Adoption Kits

Videos

Blogs

User Guide

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

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Arja