ADE-L waveform calculator automatically selects another sim directory

Hi Vivek

If it is possible, would you please retry using the latest version of Virtuoso (IC614-508) and let us know if the problem still persists?

Thanks
Quek

Hi Quek,

Unfortunately, I have no possibility to do that. I can start Virtuoso only from a predefined design environment. It is not possible to launch the tool directly. I would imagine that the design environment will be updated once (eventually).

Is there no way other way out? I've got the version IC6.1.4-64b.500.1. I cannot check the subversion with icfb -W, as that command is not supported in the design environment.

 Vivek

Hi Vivek

You can still check the version using "virtuoso -W". Would you please provide more details for the following comment?

>>Now, all of a sudden, the calculator has selcted another simulation run directory

I mean the specific steps which led to the above problem. Thanks.

Best regards
Quek

 Hi,

 I tried that, but I get the same number I posted earlier, namely  sub-version  IC6.1.4-64b.500.1. So that would be the sub-version number.

As to the specific steps, I do the following:

1. Open results browser via ADE-L (In my design environment, I can do this directly from a menu on the CIW).

2. Select results directory via browser.Call it "results_select"

3. Plot any waveform.

As soon as the waveform is plotted in the window, I can see that the results browser has opened an additional run directory "results_x", and set the context to this one. So, if I were not careful and tried to plot something further, it wouldn't work. I need to close "results_x", reselect "results_select" and proceed further. 

The only connection I can see is that "results_x" contains data from the last schematic which I had directly simulated (via GUI) in ADE-L. So somehow, the tool remembers the last simulated schematic and keeps selecting it per default.

Vivek

Hi Vivek

Unfortunately I am unable to reproduce the problem using IC614-508. There are also no reports of similar issues in our database. Actually there should not be a need to close the wrong database. You can simply reselect the correct results directory from the browser. Would you please help to do the following?

a. Start a new session of Virtuoso
b. Open results browser and open the results directory
c. Plot a waveform

If the results brower now shows the wrong directory, please upload the CDS.log file. Please try not to do any unnecessary actions so that we can have a clean log file.

Best regards
Quek

 Hi Quek,

Indeed, the problem does not appear if I restart a fresh Virtuoso session and then go on to use ADE-L from the CIW without having started any other ADE-L session.

However, I noticed that if I once start an ADE-L session in any other design, and then am done with it (have closed it completely), ADE-L goes on to load this design again and again. Here's an extract from the log at the point where this happens although I doubt if this is of any help:

WARNING (OCN-6096): Could not find runObjFile under /data/sim/sim_self_noise/case1/rundir/all. Calculator data access functions will not work.

Note that I am running the simulations via command-line spectre (MDL) and using ADE-L to (a) generate the netlist out of my schematic, and running basic diagnostic checks, and (b) to process the output waveforms. For this reason, you do not see the standard directory structure of the form "spectre/schematic/..."

Based on what I am seeing, it would appear that I would need to start a new Virtuoso session for viewing results of previously run simulations. As soon as an ADE-L session is launched for any design, the results browser seems to automatically load results from the last ADE-L session that was launched in the current session.

Vivek

The message about the runObj file is benign, but the issue is that ADE L is designed to access the results from ADE, not the results from arbitrary places. So doing things in ADE will automatically set the results browser to point to the place where it expects to find the results. It would be rather annoying for an ADE user if it didn't.

If you just want to access the results from some other directory structure, you can obviously open them, but ADE will reset back to the default location when  you do various things in ADE.

You could always just open the results using "viva" standalone, or even just launching the results browser from the Tools menu in the CIW. However, if ADE is running, ADE will be in control. There's only ever a single results browser, so the current directory gets switched by the active ADE session.

Regards,

Andrew.

 admittedly, that would be a way out. And I was using "viva" earlier. However, I find it a bit more problematic. First of all, I do not see the "stack" for my calculator, which I find rather useful. And secondly, and this is more important, I could not get the calculator to perform trivial arithmetic manipulations on my data and plot the results without causing it to crash with a core dump and a message 

 "It appears from your Log that you have lost your network connection or the required access to continue". 

Now, neither of the two cases is likely. When running the calculator out of ADE-L on the other hand, I was able to get everything to plot correctly (no problems there). For reference, all I was trying to plot something as trivial as "signal1+signal2" was enough to get viva to crash.

Why should there be different versions of the same basic tool?

Vivek

Vivek,

My guess is that you've ended up running the "MDL" version of ViVA rather than the SKILL version.

Try running "viva -expr skill".

Which version are you running?

Regards,

Andrew

 a bit late in responding, but I wanted to wait and check to be sure that the problem really went away with this solution. So, "viva -expr skill" works out, even if it is a bit slow in loading. the problem is gone.

Thanks!

Vivek