Question on Schematic Porting from X-Foundry PDK to Y-Foundry PDK

Just thinking about writing conversion code between the same foundry's PDK's gives me a headache.  Going from one foundry to another is even worse!

For removing unwanted CDF properties, why don't you just delete them?

For going from string to integer, just use

pcFix(cdfParseFloatString("3.14k"))

=> 3140

 Here is my contribution.

aelSuffixNotation(2e-5);=> "20u"
pcFix(cdfParseFloatString("3.14k"));=> 3140
pcFix(cdfParseFloatString("3.14u"));=> 0  humm..
evalstring("3.14u");=> 3.14e-06

Thanks!  I didn't know about aelSuffixNotation.

I think it would be safer to use cdfParseFloatString instead of evalstring tho......

aelSuffixNotation has its uses (probably aelNumber() is more useful in this context though), but I'd use cdfParseFloatString as a matter of good practice. The benefit of cdfParseFloatString is that it's in all executables - so is also "pcell safe", whereas aelSuffixNotation/aelNumber is not in dbAccess, the stream interfaces and so on, because it's ADE-related. Not a big issue for your application, but if you get into the habit of using cdfParseFloatString you won't be surprised.

I always advise against using evalstring. One it's using run-time evaluation, but more importantly if the string happens to contain a bit of SKILL code, you may not get what you get. For example, if the string happens to contain "(exit)"...

Regards,

Andrew.

Thanks for all the replies and tips.

I am using "abConvertComponentParams.il" to do the conversion.

In "conv.config" file, I defined a fix function trying to do string to integer conversion:

  (nil
   fromLib   "foundrya"
   fromCell  "res1"
   toLib     "foundryb"
   toCell    "res1_ckt"
   runCallbacks (?useInstCDF t ?callInitProc t)
   params (
           ("connection" "connection")
           ("w" "segW")
           ("l" "segL")
           ("m" "m")
           ("segments" "segments" fixseg)
           )
  )

The procedure "fixseg" is:

procedure(fixseg(inst parName val)
  printf("Fixing %s on %s\n" parName inst~>name)
/*  segs = evalstring(val) */
/*  segs = aelNumber(val)  */
/*  sprintf(nil "%n" segs) */
  sprintf(nil "%n" pcFix(cdfParseFloatString(val)))
/*  sprintf(nil "%n" evalstring(val)) */
  )
 

So I tried different ways but none of them worked.

Somehow the procedure would always return a string.

Maybe it is related to the "abConvertComponentParams.il" itself?

Thanks.

Hi Yiwu,

Your fixseg procedure shows what you've tried, but it also shows (mostly) why they didn't work - aelNumber will return a floating point number, and the sprintf() statements will only ever return a string, so if you need fixseg to return an integer (fixnum) then you should choose a function or statement that returns that data type. Examples might be atoi() or round() perhaps in combination with either aelNumber() or cdfParseFloatString()?

Hopefully this helps you.

Regards,

Lawrence

Hi Lawrence,

Thanks for pointing out the key point.

I thought format string "%n" should return an integer, but it does not.

Adding atoi() solved the problem.

  atoi(sprintf(nil "%n" pcFix(cdfParseFloatString(val))))

Thank you for the help.

Best,

Ethan

Hi Ethan,

in your example you are doing some unnecessary conversions to the string format and back again - if you just use pcFix() and pcRound() directly as needed, these return an integer and you don't need to use the sprintf or atoi functions.  E.g.

pcFix(cdfParseFloatString(val))

Hope it helps!

Lawrence.

Hi Lawrence,

Indeed,

        pcFix(cdfParseFloatString(val))

is a more elgant solution.

Thanks again!

Ethan