Virtuoso Video Diary: schTraceNet, a Simple Solution to Complex Questions!

The Virtuoso^® Schematic Editor Probes Assistant has existed for a while now. It’s a dockable assistant that lets you visually inspect the probed nets across a schematic design hierarchy. Now, with the implementation of the SKILL function schTraceNet, you can ask much more complex questions than What’s this net connected to?. The SKILL function offers programmatic flexibility, allowing you to define your own callback as an argument and have it called at each hierarchical level where the traced net is present. This gives you the flexibility to write your own SKILL, based on schTraceNet, to find out answers to complex questions such as:

What’s the total silicon area connected to a net? How do I compute the fan in/out of a net? How can I define custom checkers, such as, the number of transistors on a net to be smaller than a specified value? What’s the difference in size between the instances on different power nets? How can I find the instances on a hierarchical net which are not from a specific library? Which instances on a hierarchical net are bound to a specific cellview type? and so on...

schTraceNet traces a schematic net through the design hierarchy and calls a user-defined callback at each hierarchical level where the net is present. The callback is able to trace all instances, including the ignored instances that are not displayed in the Navigator assistant.

Note: Using SKILL++ it also becomes possible to encapsulate the callback, global variable, and the call to schTraceNet in a namespace so that it can be referred to as standalone.

The video Probing and Calculating the Area of a Net demonstrates how probes can find all instances that connect to a net and uses the SKILL schTraceNet to calculate the connected area of a net.

To learn more about this feature, watch the video Probing and Calculating the Area of a Net. You can also find this video in the Video Library section on the Cadence Support portal.

Related Resources

• Virtuoso Schematic Editor SKILL Functions Reference
• Virtuoso Schematic Editor User Guide
• Virtuoso Video Diary: What’s this Net Connected to?

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Virtuoso Video Diary is an online journal that relays information about Virtuoso videos that are available in the Cadence Online Support Video Library. Hundreds of interesting videos on a wide variety of new and exciting Virtuoso features have already been created. Virtuoso Video Diary brings you direct links to these videos and other related material, on regular basis. Click Subscribe to visit the Subscriptions box at the top of the page in which you can submit your e-mail address to receive notifications about our latest Virtuoso Video Diary posts.

Zsolt Haag and Sarah Finlayson