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netlist formatter for spectre and AMS

Jorg

Hi Andrew,

I pray you'll find this and find the time to respond.

I want to write netlist formatters to be used with spectre and amsdesigner (different formatters for different simulators, of course).

What I found in the documentation is, how to integrate a new simulator, which seems to be meant for non-Cadence products.  In my case, it seems a overkill, since I do want to simulate with spectre, later maybe with amsdesigner.

The whole idea evolves around this problem: the electro-analogous systems, that I want to design, use signals which are single connections physically and bussed signals for simulation. For consistency, I want just one set of schematics and create appropriate netlists for simulation and physical verification from them.  Preferrably, the schematics would represent connections as single ports. Thus my idea to customize netlisting for spectre.

Could you please comment on where to best place the resolution of single vs bus for my purpose, and point me someplace how to start the netlist customization?

I also have looked at the netlist procedure property, that can be attached to a cell. This enables me, to manipulate how instances of this particular cell are printed into the netlist of a schematic. However, it leaves me with the problem, how to also manipulate the interface of this schematic netlist, i.e. the subckt/module definition.  Is there a similarily simple way to modify these as well?

 Thank you in advace for any hint and help.

Kind Regards,

Jörg

Parents
  • Hi Tom,

    This is going off-topic now, but draws my attention.

    tweeks said:

    The electrical concepts (voltage, current, resistance, capacitance) were first explained to me using the analogy of water flowing through pipes and into buckets, etc.,

    So was it to me, but at this time I had no clear concept of what pressure was, and did not grasp (nor was it explained to me) the clear distinction of flow and tension. So the "explanation" left me with one unknown concept being related to another unknown concept in an incomprehensible manner.

    In general I believe that teaching electricity to young people should explain the real concepts at an appropriate level of complexity, instead of analogies.  If you want to discuss this further, we'll ask the moderator to point us to an appropriate forum.


    tweeks said:

    I've also heard of people using commodity 3d graphics acceleraterator cards to make their circuit simulations go faster (becaues the vector/matrix calculations are done on special-purpose hardware), so there's another interesting, somewhat looser connection there between circuit systems and the way images are formed; i.e. the behavior of light.

    No.  It has nothing at all to do with image formation or any properties of light, but everything with the numerical mathematics inside the simulator.
    For an introduction, there is a very good book by Ken Kundert on how spectre works.  The title has a substring "spectre and spice", you'll find it.

    tweeks said:

    Anyway, sorry I can't be more helpful about customizing the netlister.  The documentation ought to be in there somewhere, but if it's too hard to figure out, I don't think it's out of the question to write your own netlister in SKILL from scratch: just walk down the schematic hierarchy, gather all the connectivity info you need, and then emit whatever text you want. 

    I don't think so.  The netlisters are highly configurable, in a overwhelming somewhat confusing diversity.  My question was about the right entry point into this for my purpose.
    If I would like to go the full way, there is OSS.   Also schematic hierarchy traversal is separated from netlist formatting. 
    And, I want this to be integrated in ADE, and use existing automations as far as possible.

    tweeks said:

    the potential complications of the fancy wire/bus notation, but

    not to mention net expressions, interpreted value strings for parameters, pcell call-backs, and the like.

    tweeks said:

    there are built-in functions

    Programmers tend to be lazy, I'm no exception.  If something is already there, use it.

    tweeks said:

    I can help you if you decide to go this route, because I've written a schematic-scraper before--Andrew's probably written a few too.

    Thank you. What is a schematic-scraper?


    Jorg
Reply
  • Hi Tom,

    This is going off-topic now, but draws my attention.

    tweeks said:

    The electrical concepts (voltage, current, resistance, capacitance) were first explained to me using the analogy of water flowing through pipes and into buckets, etc.,

    So was it to me, but at this time I had no clear concept of what pressure was, and did not grasp (nor was it explained to me) the clear distinction of flow and tension. So the "explanation" left me with one unknown concept being related to another unknown concept in an incomprehensible manner.

    In general I believe that teaching electricity to young people should explain the real concepts at an appropriate level of complexity, instead of analogies.  If you want to discuss this further, we'll ask the moderator to point us to an appropriate forum.


    tweeks said:

    I've also heard of people using commodity 3d graphics acceleraterator cards to make their circuit simulations go faster (becaues the vector/matrix calculations are done on special-purpose hardware), so there's another interesting, somewhat looser connection there between circuit systems and the way images are formed; i.e. the behavior of light.

    No.  It has nothing at all to do with image formation or any properties of light, but everything with the numerical mathematics inside the simulator.
    For an introduction, there is a very good book by Ken Kundert on how spectre works.  The title has a substring "spectre and spice", you'll find it.

    tweeks said:

    Anyway, sorry I can't be more helpful about customizing the netlister.  The documentation ought to be in there somewhere, but if it's too hard to figure out, I don't think it's out of the question to write your own netlister in SKILL from scratch: just walk down the schematic hierarchy, gather all the connectivity info you need, and then emit whatever text you want. 

    I don't think so.  The netlisters are highly configurable, in a overwhelming somewhat confusing diversity.  My question was about the right entry point into this for my purpose.
    If I would like to go the full way, there is OSS.   Also schematic hierarchy traversal is separated from netlist formatting. 
    And, I want this to be integrated in ADE, and use existing automations as far as possible.

    tweeks said:

    the potential complications of the fancy wire/bus notation, but

    not to mention net expressions, interpreted value strings for parameters, pcell call-backs, and the like.

    tweeks said:

    there are built-in functions

    Programmers tend to be lazy, I'm no exception.  If something is already there, use it.

    tweeks said:

    I can help you if you decide to go this route, because I've written a schematic-scraper before--Andrew's probably written a few too.

    Thank you. What is a schematic-scraper?


    Jorg
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