Logic Cadence VHDL and Verilog Simulation Guide and Tutorial doc

Cadence VHDL/Verilog Simulation Guide and Tutorial

for use at the University of Cincinnati

Wei Yang

January 2003

(Updated Jan 04, H. Carter)

This guide describes, via a tutorial, how to set up the personal environment (paths and

evnrionment variables), and simulate VHDL (or Verilog) models using the Cadence

tools. The tutorial describes VHDL simulation, but Verilog simulation should be

identical except that the model files traditionally end in .v rather than .vhd or .vhdl. The

Cadence simulator can simulate either or both VHDL and Verilog models.

The Cadence tools were initially acquired in 2001 and have been gaining increasing use

as educators and researchers in the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer

Science (ECECS) department have become familiar with them. All of the Cadence tools

and documentation are located in /opt/CAD/Cadence/ and can be executed only from

Sun workstations served by the department servers. Since these tools are commercially

licensed, please do not point any URL's to them from public websites.

This guide is presented in three sections:

1. How to set up your environment to view the documents and run the simulator tools.

You can skip this section if your environment is already set up to access the Cadence

tools.

2. Executing the VHDL/Verilog simulator. Two approaches can be used to simulate

VHDL/Verilog models: 1) manually executing a series of three programs to compile,

elaborate, and simulate the models, or 2) using a GUI to perform the simulation. We

describe both methods.

3. How to visualize the simulation results.

How to Set Up Your Environment to Access Cadence Tools and

Documents

The Cadence tool set actually consists of a set of tool suites. For example, there is the

integrated circuit design suite which resides in the IC directory. For out purposes, we are

interested in the VHDL/Verilog simulation tools which are in the LDV directory.

For the instructions given below on adding path and enviornment information to the

initialization files, all Cadence tools are included just in case you will unltimately need

other than simulation tools in the future.

Using a standard text editor like emacs or vi, add the following lines to your .cshrc or .

cshrc.local initialization file after the first set path command (which looks something

like set path=(/bin /usr/bin /usr/ucb /etc .) . You will be using csh or tcsh (preferred)

as your working shell. If you usually use sh or bash, you should execute tcsh when you

execute Cadence tools.