[si netlister] not running, but no useful error message

Dear Chris K,

Chris K said:

Any ideas how to debug this further?

Did you try to open a virtuouso session (using the same cds.lib as your command line) and entering the commands in your "si.cmd" file in the CIW?

Shawn

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the response. Now that I look at the si.cmd file more closely and I see it's just a bunch of assignments like this:

vlogExpandIteratedInst = 't
hnlUserShortCVList = list("tsmcPseudo" "pRes")

Of course, there can't be any action from it. Then it turns out the INFO message about the oaSocket was just a red herring!

This is now beyond my original query, but here is what I tried to do:

I ran the netlister via the CIW -> Tools -> NC Verilog and wanted now to do this with a batch script.

I had actually screwed up: I was supposed to do this:

si -batch -command netlist -cdslib ../../cds.lib

Now the tool runs, but I'm getting errors like this:

ERROR (OSSHNL-366): Netlisting failed because the instance 'MM16_1' in cellview '<libname>/<cellname>/schematic' is bound to
an invalid placed master '<process>/pch_svt_mac/symbol'. Ensure that the specified placed master
exists and is included in the list of reference libraries in the cds.lib file,
and netlist again.

(I had to remove the actual names in <> above.)

I don't know if you're a Cadence employee or not, so I don't want to overburden you with this. Thanks for your pointer, it was very helpful.

Dear Chris K.,

Chris K said:

si -batch -command netlist -cdslib ../../cds.lib

Now the tool runs, but I'm getting errors like this:

ERROR (OSSHNL-366): Netlisting failed because the instance 'MM16_1' in cellview '<libname>/<cellname>/schematic' is bound to
an invalid placed master '<process>/pch_svt_mac/symbol'. Ensure that the specified placed master
exists and is included in the list of reference libraries in the cds.lib file,
and netlist again.

I'm not a Cadence employee, but did have another thought if you have the patience! I am wondering if you need to include a hard UNIX path to your desired cds.lib file. In your command line, you included a relative path and I am not sure if your run directory is the same as the directory from which you launched the command. In that case, it will not find the cds.lib library. If you include the full path to the cds.lib, you will avoid that issue.

Alternatively, it appears you can include the run directory in the command line with something like:

si <run_directory_path> -batch -command netlist

I only add this thought as the error suggests it cannot find the symbol and asks that you verify it is included in the list of files in your cds.lib....suggesting it did not read your cds.lib file.

Good luck Chris - if you have patience!
Shawn

Dear Chris K.,

Chris K said:

si -batch -command netlist -cdslib ../../cds.lib

Now the tool runs, but I'm getting errors like this:

ERROR (OSSHNL-366): Netlisting failed because the instance 'MM16_1' in cellview '<libname>/<cellname>/schematic' is bound to
an invalid placed master '<process>/pch_svt_mac/symbol'. Ensure that the specified placed master
exists and is included in the list of reference libraries in the cds.lib file,
and netlist again.

I'm not a Cadence employee, but did have another thought if you have the patience! I am wondering if you need to include a hard UNIX path to your desired cds.lib file. In your command line, you included a relative path and I am not sure if your run directory is the same as the directory from which you launched the command. In that case, it will not find the cds.lib library. If you include the full path to the cds.lib, you will avoid that issue.

Alternatively, it appears you can include the run directory in the command line with something like:

si <run_directory_path> -batch -command netlist

I only add this thought as the error suggests it cannot find the symbol and asks that you verify it is included in the list of files in your cds.lib....suggesting it did not read your cds.lib file.

Good luck Chris - if you have patience!
Shawn

ShawnLogan said:

I am wondering if you need to include a hard UNIX path to your desired cds.lib file. In your command line, you included a relative path and I am not sure if your run directory is the same as the directory from which you launched the command. In that case, it will not find the cds.lib library. If you include the full path to the cds.lib, you will avoid that issue.

It should not be necessary to give a full path to the cds.lib - it shouldn't matter whether you use a full or relative path, and any relative library references within the cds.lib would be resolved relative to the directory containing the cds.lib

However, the approach that often works best is to give the directory for the netlisting run directory as an argument to the "si" command (as in Shawn's second suggestion).

One possible cause for this that comes to mind is whether there is some environment variable needed to locate the PDK library (which appears to be missing) which is not set when you're running si. Does it work from the directory you were running si in if you use "virtuoso -cdslib ../../cds.lib" ? Perhaps you are using a wrapper around virtuoso (type "which virtuoso" to see if it returns virtuoso directly from a Cadence installation or something else)? If so, maybe that is configuring the environment to ensure the PDK is found in Virtuoso, but perhaps that's not working for "si"?

Andrew

Hi Shawn and Andrew,

Thanks for your suggestions. Sorry for taking a long time to respond.

I've tried to run si by specifying absolute paths to the rundir and cds.lib, but this makes no difference.

I've also tried running virtuoso -cdslib ../../cds.lib from the netlisting directory and it didn't open the libmgr like it normally does, nor was it displaying the process specific PDK menus. Through trial and error (comparing with the way I normally run it) I figured out it had nothing to do with specifying the path to cds.lib, but that there were several hidden files in the normal start path (.cdsenv, .cdsinit) that needed to be linked to in my netlist dir to make the libmgr to pop up automatically. It looks like something in my cds.lib must have gotten corrupted as now see a lib from a different process pop up in the libmgr. I hope the CAD guys can figure it out for me.

Thanks!

Dear Chris K.

Chris K said:

It looks like something in my cds.lib must have gotten corrupted as now see a lib from a different process pop up in the libmgr. I hope the CAD guys can figure it out for me.

Well, thank you for letting us know the result of your debugging. It is amazing how tangled these issues can become. Hopefully your CAD team can help restore your cds.lib file to its working version soon. Good luck!

Shawn

Thanks for your help!