A problem when running ADE for spectre.envOpts

The controlMode variable would normally be "interactive" by default, and the interactiveA variable is already at its default value of t. These two control how spectre is run in ADE, and the default mode is to try to improve simulation throughput by keeping it alive and talking to it interactively to pass (for example) variable changes without having to restart the simulator, re-checkout the license, re-read the netlist and so on.

The controlMode primarily impacts ADE L, and some set it to batch to avoid spectre holding onto the license after the simulation has completed. Normally in ADE spectre doesn't exit (although this mode isn't used when using APS) and then if you just change a design variable and re-simulate, spectre continues. Similarly the parametric analysis tool is more efficient this way. However, since the spectre license is held onto after simulations have completed, some customers turn this off - they lose the interactive speed benefit, but don't end up holding onto a simulation license for longer than they need to.

The maestro interactiveA  setting for Assembler (and interactiveE for Explorer) behave slightly differently. Spectre is kept alive whilst (certain) sweeps are performed, but not beyond all the simulations. So there's really no downside (in general) of having the interactiveA/interactiveE modes enabled - all they do is allow simulation throughput to be improved all the time that you are running more sweep points than you have jobs in your job policy. There have been the odd occasions since this was introduced that there were bugs with the interactive behaviour when we would advise to turn off the setting (set it to nil) to workaround those issues until the bug was fixed, but that's not general advice but only in response to a specific issue. So unless an AE (or article on COS) specifically advises setting it to nil for the version you're using, I'd leave the interactiveA/interactiveE setting at default. 

If you then want ADE L to be in batch mode for the reasons I mentioned above (about licensing), you can just ignore the warning.

Regards,

Andrew.

Hi Andrew, thanks for your answer, quite clear for me. 

Just follow the question, how i could set envVal to turn off batch mode ?

Hi Andrew, thanks for your answer, quite clear for me. 

Just follow the question, how i could set envVal to turn off batch mode ?

envSetVal("spectre.envOpts" "controlMode" 'string "interactive")

if you want to do this in your .cdsinit. If it's in (say) ~/.cdsenv (note, .cdsenv in the working dir is not picked up by default), then it would be:

spectre.envOpts controlMode string "interactive"

Regards,

Andrew