ADE L and Spectre environment settings revert to default eah time a simulation is started

Dear PrzemDictador,

PrzemDictador said:

Is there a way to define the setting permanently? (Ideally without messing with SKILL....)

As you probably know, ADE-L is no longer a supported product. it has been replaced with ADE Assembler and ADE Explorer. ADE Explorer is likely the application that is most similar to ADE_L - but it has far, far, more features. It is relatively easy to migrate to ADE Explorer using the a state fiel for your ADE-L sessio. I would suggest you seriously consider migrating to ADE Explorer.

Within ADE Explorer and Assembler, there is a feature that allows you to save the properties of a graph window (ViVA window) as a "Plotting Template". I believe this feature that addresses your need.  With the saved template file, you may re-run your simulation and it will display the new simulation results in your saved template format.

Some information and examples are provided on the feature at URL:

https://community.cadence.com/cadence_blogs_8/b/cic/posts/virtuoso-ic6-1-8-viva-plotting-templates

PrzemDictador said:

And one more thing. Sometimes the simulation gets stuck at "waiting for licence". I suspect spectre is trying to go multithread depending on the complexity of the circuit. And because we do not have that type of licence spectre gets stuck at the licence call.

Have you tried to disable multithreading? If I recall, you can add an option to your spectre run line by using the ADE-L Simulation menu item:

Setup-->Environment Options-->User Command-Line Options

You might try entering "-multithread" or "-mt"

Shawn

Rather than using the command-line options to turn off multi-threading, it would be better to use Setup->High Performance Options to do this.

Plotting templates is indeed the right way to solve your plotting setup - and using ADE Explorer is definitely the solution. Cadence has not sold ADE L for 3 years now, so it’s pretty unlikely that you only have licenses for ADE L (and it’s been in the software since IC6.1.7.

Andrew

My mistake, it is actually ADE Explorer that I have here, I wrote L out of habit.
It seems that multithreading was the culprit. Simple circuits were simulated  by Spectre in single thread while more complex circuits Spectre was trying to simulate as multithread. It was confusing as some some circuits were simulated while the others were stuck.

btw- What is the difference between IC6 and IC23 and ICADVM20?

My mistake, it is actually ADE Explorer that I have here, I wrote L out of habit.
It seems that multithreading was the culprit. Simple circuits were simulated  by Spectre in single thread while more complex circuits Spectre was trying to simulate as multithread. It was confusing as some some circuits were simulated while the others were stuck.

btw- What is the difference between IC6 and IC23 and ICADVM20?

PrzemDictador said:

btw- What is the difference between IC6 and IC23 and ICADVM20?

IC6.1.8 and ICADVM18.1 were two parallel releases with the difference being that the 18.1 release was an "advanced methodology" release. This is needed for access to:

1. Advanced Node Technologies (FinFET and certain other advanced technologies)
2. Multi-fabric technologies (e.g. board+package within Virtuoso)
3. Photonics
4. Virtuoso Layout EXL functionality

These were released originally in 2018, and then in 2020 we released ICADVM20.1 to replace ICADVM18.1 (the base release of ICADVM20.1 corresponded with IC6.1.8 ISR14). This still tracked IC6.1.8 - and for much of the front-end technology they matched exactly still (they were both hot fixed together), although ICADVM20.1 dropped support for ADE L/XL which persisted in IC6.1.8.

Originally the release streams were split to allow for advanced node technology to be released without disturbing the mainstream flows (this was some considerable time ago now).

Then earlier this year we released IC23.1 which is a new unified release and so we no longer have this split release stream. IC6.1.8 is still continuing but with a less-frequent hotfix schedule, and all new enhancements (front-end and back-end) are in IC23.1 instead - so the expectation is that everyone will ultimately move to IC23.1 and at some point IC6.1.8 will reach end-of-support (the date has not been set yet for this). What it does mean is that new functionality and fixes may appear only in IC23.1 (for mature nodes and mature methodologies as well as advanced methodologies) in the same way that we do with most releases - we have a period of overlap, but they are not duplicated.

Regards,

Andrew