StrmOut from Virtual Memory

Hi Yaosan,

I believe that the IC613 version and later can Stream Out from virtual memory, but I don't think this option is available for the IC5141 version.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Lawrence.

Hi Lawrence,

Yes I'm using IC613, in the XStreamOut GUI there are 2 ways to StrmOut my design: StrmOut From Disk and StrmOut From Virtual Memory.

My first question would be what streamout command, with what switches, do I need to put in the GUI's command textbox when I'm using the StrmOut From Virtual Memory option.

The 2nd question is how can I do the StrmOut From Virtual Memory without using GUI. Is there a way to dump out my scratch cellview and somehow get strmout to pick them up?

Hi Yaosan,

Can you check for me wheather you have the wrapper in your local bin. Just open a terminal, and type command - which strmin

How

Hi Yaosan,

In IC614, this is easier. Streaming out from virtual memory can be properly done from the GUI without needing to type in a command line, and there's also SKILL support. You can do:

xstSetField("library" "mylib")
xstSetField("topCell" "mycell")
xstSetField("strmFile" "mycell.gds")
xstSetField("virtualMemory" "true")
xstOutDoTranslate()

Note the documentation for xstOutDoTranslate leaves a little to be desired - I've pushed for this to be fixed (I requested the ability to do this from SKILL, but it seems the documentation has not been done properly).

In IC613, you need to fill in the field on the form with the same command line arguments you would give to the strmout command from the command line. e.g. "strmout -help". You could enter:

strmout -library mylib -topCell mycell -strmFile mycell.gds

in the field.

There's no public SKILL function in IC613 to do the stream out from memory (you'll need to move to IC614 for that).

Regards,

Andrew.

Hi How, thanks for the reply, but I don't think using wrapper or not is making a difference here.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the detailed reply, I already suspected there's no way to do the strmout from virtual memory using SKILL in IC613. It's good to know the feature is coming in IC614, for now I guess my only option is to copy my cellview to a new view, make the changes I need then do the streamout. I could also make changes to my existing cellview and revert the changes after the streamout is done.

 Thank you for all the feedbacks!

I could potentially tell you the private SKILL function to do this in IC613, but I don't want to do that because the private function no longer exists in IC614 now that the interface has changed - so it's not really a good idea to tell you, because your code would break as soon as you went to IC614.

Could you move to IC614? It's released now...

Regards,

Andrew.

Hi Andrew,

I'm not sure when we're moving to IC614 but if it's already released then it probably won't be long before we can start using it.

I have another question that are slightly unrelated. What is the proper way of working in scratch view mode? Should I create a new view in scratch mode and copy over the object one by one before I start doing the modification I need? This seems to be quite troublesome with all the new blockages, vias and other OA objects listed under different property of cellviews.

I tried opening an existing, opened cellview in scratch mode, hoping it will be a new copy i.e. with new dbID that exists only in memory, but somehow it shares the same cellview ID as the original opened cellview. I also tried to use dbCopyCellView() but it won't let me copy to the scratch view unless I specify the overwrite flag, which will write the scratch view to disk, defeating the purpose of having one in the first place.

 Hi Yaosan,

I'd recommend starting a new thread for a new unrelated question such as this.

In short, scratch mode is handled differently in IC61x than it is in IC51 and earlier releases. In both releases a scratch cellview cannot be saved.  If I remember correctly for IC61x, a scratch cellview is obtained by opening a read-only cellview and making it writeable - changes can be made but not saved, essentially what scratch mode means.

There is sure to be a lot more discussion on this, so please start a new thread.

Regards,

Lawrence.

Hi Andrew,

Is the "virtualMemory" key only supported when I call the new xstOutDoTranslate() function introduced in IC614? I would like to use the command line "strmout" function and add this key to my template file if that is possible. That's what I was using before IC614, and I would rather not to switch entirely to the new xsSetField approach to be backward compatible.

Yaosan,

If you're running strmout from the command line (I assume you mean the UNIX command line), then this setting is irrelevant because it is being run in a separate process and so will not read Virtuoso's virtual memory. This only makes sense when run from virtuoso itself.

So as such, the key only makes sense in IC614, and even then only when you're doing the streamout within Virtuoso itself.

Regards,

Andrew.