ECE 558/658 VLSI Design Principles
Cad Based Design


§            The Cad tools can be run remotely using any ECS Windows machine as an X-terminal to sloth.ecs.umass.edu.

§            Cygwin information.

§            Before running Cad tools for the first time:

1               You must have an account on ECS. Contact ECS, if you don’t have a ECS account.

2               You must have also have 200MB of disk space on sloth.ecs.umass.edu at /mnt2/username. Contact the TA, if you don’t have this directory. You can check your /mnt2 directory by using following command after you login sloth.ecs.umass.edu.

If your ECS account ID is john, type this command on the prompt.

 

(sloth) ls /mnt2/john

 

If it show the content of /mnt2/john, your space is there.

 

1               Run the Cad tool setup flow.

§            Each time you run the Cad tools:

1.    ssh  sloth
When typed at a unix prompt on the local machine, this opens a terminal window on sloth. Login with your ECS username and password.

2.    Optional: tcsh
This will change your shell to tcsh. I like tcsh because it makes your command line behave like emacs. Among other things, the backspace works, the up/down arrow keys scroll through recently used commands, and the tab key does command completion. But this is NOT required to make any of the tools work.

3.    cd vlsix
The vlsix directory was created during the one-time setup flow. Cadence tools such as icms and layoutPlus must be started from the vlsix directory in order to find all of the libraries, etc.

§         Follow the detailed instructions for the tool of your choice.

§         Cadence

§         Hspice

§         IRSIM

§         Verilog

§         Setting up your website

Labs will be turned in by posting data on your website and sending the TA an e-mail (before the lab deadline) containing the URL.

Be sure to make all files world-readable, e.g. using chmod ugo+r *. You might ask a friend to try viewing the website to make sure it's visible. Files which are not visible by the TA will be considered not turned in. Note also that files with a timestamp (which is updated whenever the file is written) later than the lab deadline will be considered late.

Here is info on how to create an ECS website. To use the "web" command, you need to ssh to spock.ecs.umass.edu. Your ECS URL will be http://www-unix.ecs.umass.edu/~username/

§         Capturing screen snapshots

[Linux & Solaris]

§         At a command prompt in a window which does not physically cover the window you want to snapshot, type "xv".

§         Right-click to get the menu.

§         Click the "Grab" button.

§         Check the "Hide xv windows" box.

§         Click the "Grab" button.

§         Click the window whose contents you want to capture.

§         Click the "Save" button and enter a filename.

[Windows]

§         Click the window whose contents you want to capture.

§         Press ALT-PrntScrn

§         Past it on your favorite graphic editor (eq. Paintbrush).

§         0.25-um technology data

§         Level 49 SPICE model - Use this for almost all of your SPICE simulations, including all lab projects

§         Level 1 SPICE model - Use this to compare SPICE results and hand calculations for relevant homework problems

§         Hand-calculation parameters - Use this data to plug into device equations

§         Netlist conversion tools

After downloading one of these scripts, you have two options for using it.

1.    Type "perl toolname.pl" every time you run the tool.

2.    Type "chmod u+x toolname.pl" to make the script executable (a permanent change), then type "toolname.pl" every time you run the tool.

 

o        schm2sim.pl - Convert schematic netlist to IRSIM format

o        schm2spice.pl - Convert schematic netlist to SPICE format

o        lo2sim.pl - Convert extracted layout netlist to IRSIM format

o        lo2spice.pl - Convert extracted layout netlist to SPICE format

§         Other background info

o        Tools and Models

o        Overview of Design Flow

 

 

If you have problems contact the Teaching Assistant. In addition we are always looking to improve these web pages and tools. If you have suggestions and improvements to the web pages or tools please submit them to your TA. She/he will make sure the improvements are implemented.