Can liberate use an encrypted hspice model?

Hi sherry,

It should be possible. Do you have a problem?

Guangjun

Thank you for your reply! 

It would be OK while reading encrypted spectre model, but when I change model from .scs to .l as well as change  -extsim from spectre to hspice, errors would show up like this:

ERROR (SFE-841): "/home/shexy/liberate/MODELS/newmodel/***_encrypted.l" 241: Unexpected character `$' in netlist.

ERROR (SFE-1806): "/home/shexy/liberate/MODELS/newmodel/***_encrypted.l" 243: `o' ( first char of `o' ) is not a valid SPICE element type. 

ERROR (SFE-874): "/home/shexy/liberate/MODELS/newmodel/***_encrypted.l" 245: Unexpected closing bracket.

ERROR (SFE-1768): "/home/shexy/liberate/MODELS/newmodel/***_encrypted.l" 246: Expression is missing a terminating quote character.

It seems that the model is not read, right? How can I fix it?

Do you mean it works with Spectre model but not Spice model? This is more like a simulator/hspice related issue. Unfortunately, if can't help you with other vendors' tool. 

Why do you have to run hspice? You will not get the performance benefit from Liberate. You may still use spice model when using Spectre as simulator. However, it will be good if you use Spectre model as well.

You need to check the read_spice command, does it have correct -format option. Also, make sure your model wrapper has the right language settings.

Guangjun

Yes, Actually I have to use hspice model now.. I’m not sure the errors come from my settings or just hspice related issue. Would you please help me check? Here is the partial char.tcl.

set_var extsim_model_include ${rundir}/MODELS/include_models1802.sp

foreach cell $cells {

    lappend spicefiles ${rundir}/NETLIST/${cell}.pex.netlist

}

read_spice $spicefiles

char_library -extsim hspice -ccs -ecsm -cells ${cells}

include_models1802.sp is like:

**

.lib 'newmodel/****_encrypted.l' TT

When I run the tcl, errors show up like this:

Anyway, thank you a lot!

It is hard to tell when you only provide a portion of the logfile. some other warnings may also cause such error. Here are my suggestions,

1. cd into the altos.** directory, run hspice on the sim.sp. The error indicates your hspice does not run successfully. you need to following the logfile information to make it run successfully. This maynot be related to Liberate.

2. switch to Spectre simulator. you can still run Spectre using hspice model. 

a. add 'read_spice ${rundir}/MODELS/include_models1802.sp' after 'set_var extsim_model_include'

b. if you see any warnings on leaf cell in the logfile, add define_leafcell command for every device/model used in your netlist.

c. use the procedure in '1' to debug your settings for model file and netlist.

d. you may need to use 'set_var ski_enable 0' for debug runs.

One of our Spectre experts pointed out that encripted hspice model is not suported by Spectre. So, please ignore option-2 in my previous comments. 2a/b may still be worth trying. 

Guangjun

I see, thank you for your reply!   

You are welcome.

Have you solved the issue?

Yeah, I asked them for a feasible encrypted spectre model...