Getting Started with EDI 11 – Be Aware of OS and Design Import Changes So Your Migration Goes Smoothly

Hello, and welcome to my first blog! As an application engineer in customer support I use Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) System on a daily basis. Each day I see new issues, design challenges and problems customers are trying to solve. I hope to share many of the common and more interesting problems and their solutions through my blog.

One of my roles in customer support is to identify and author knowledge content for Cadence Online Support (https://support.cadence.com/). So I will highlight some of the top content and best practices for getting the most from our online support site. Lastly, I want to hear from you. Is there specific content you would like to see more of on support.cadence.com? If so, please let me know. I hope you enjoy my blog and now onto my first topic.

I'm really excited about the recent announcement of the release of Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) System 11. There are a few changes you should be aware of which can trip you up when starting with EDI 11.

OS Support

EDI 11 supports Redhat 5.0 (RHEL 5.) and later. If you try to run on a Redhat 4.0 machine you will receive an error such as:

WARNING: HOST <ccslinux12> DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE A CADENCE SUPPORTED LINUX CONFIGURATION.

For More Info,  Please Run '<cdsroot>/tools.lnx86/bin/checkSysConf' <productId>.

/icd/flow/EDI/EDI111/latest.RTM/lnx86/tools.lnx86/fe/bin/64bit/encounter: /lib64/tls/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4' not found (required by /icd/flow/EDI/EDI111/latest.RTM/lnx86/tools.lnx86/fe/bin/64bit/encounter)

/icd/flow/EDI/EDI111/latest.RTM/lnx86/tools.lnx86/fe/bin/64bit/encounter: /lib64/tls/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.4' not found (required by /icd/flow/EDI/EDI111/latest.RTM/lnx86/tools.lnx86/Qt/64bit/lib/libQtCore.so.4)

Go to support.cadence.com and select Resources - Computing Platforms for more information on OS support for Cadence product.

Design Import Changes

A major update has been made to the Design Import step (see What's New). In earlier versions the netlist and libraries were loaded by running the loadConfig command which read in a config file containing a long list of rda_Input variables pointing to the netlist, libraries, etc. In EDI 11, the rda_Input variables have been replaced by a smaller set of more intuitive and better documented variables. The loadConfig/commitConfig commands have been replaced by the command init_design. A sample import flow is:

set init_lef_file "tech.lef cells.lef"
set init_verilog "top.v"
set init_top_cell "top"
set init_mmmc_file "viewDefinition.tcl"
init_design 

We've done our best to make the migration to using init_design as smoothly as possible. The Importing and Exporting Designs Chapter of the EDI System User Guide has been updated on the new design import model.

The easiest way to migrate a design is to save it in EDI 10.1 and restore it in EDI 11. This will automatically convert it to the new format. See Solution 11752118 for details.

If you want to convert your current config file (.conf file) a script was recently published to do this. See Solution 11782334 on how to use conf2init.tcl to convert your config file to the new format for init_design.

If you're a Foundation Flow user the migration is easy, as the Foundation Flow scripts have been updated to set the variables and run init_design based on your setup.tcl file. Just make sure to use the EDI 11 scripts and set "set vars(version) 11.1.0" in your setup.tcl file. See Solution 11781374 for more details.

Lastly, Multi-Mode Multi-Corner (MMMC) is required in EDI 11. Solution 11687186 shows a basic MMMC setup for two delay corners and one mode. The EDI System User Guide has additional details on configuring the setup for MMMC analysis.

I hope this makes your migration to EDI 11 go smoothly and avoids any trip-ups.

Brian Wallace