Synopsys VCS-MX

[Tim]

Is OSVVM supported by the latest Synopsys VCS-MX?

I didn’t notice any scripts in the OsvvmLibaries/Scripts repository.

[Jim Lewis]

Hi Tim,
> Is OSVVM supported by the latest Synopsys VCS-MX?
It is my understanding that it is, however, I have not done any testing with it – yet. Hopefully toward the end of the year, that will be changing.

> I didn’t notice any scripts in the OsvvmLibaries/Scripts repository.
It is on my todo list. Does VCS-MX have a tcl interface or do you run
it from the unix/linux shell?

The path to tcl is fairly straight forward. There are a only a
couple of steps.
1) Edit ToolConfiguration.tcl
In VCS-MX run the following tcl command:
puts [info nameofexecutable]

As long as the tail of this path does not match one of the other tools, this is easy,
you would just need to add another branch to the if-then-else of the form:

} elseif {[string match $ToolExecutableName "<root-name-of-executable>"]} {
  set ToolType    "simulator"
  set ToolVendor  "Synopsys"
  set simulator   "VCS-MX"
# if you can get the tool version, ok, but it is ok to temporarily 
# put something in here like I did in GHDL
  quietly set ToolNameVersion ${simulator}-<version>
  echo $ToolNameVersion
  source ${SCRIPT_DIR}/VendorScripts_Synopsys_VCS_MX.tcl

2) Create VendorScripts_Synopsys_VCS_MX.tcl
Copy either Mentor or RivieraPro versions.
Substitute the in the VCS-MX commands to compile for 2008
and run a simulation. Currently for other simulators
I am logging all signals – but for larger sims this may
not be practical.

If you have problems, reach out to be by email. Especially if
either I can write it and you can test it, or if you are willing
to share the final version of the above files.

Best Regards,
Jim

[Tim]

I’m running from tcsh on Linux and get the following syntax error when using VCS 2020.03-SP1:

Error-[IEEEVHDLSYNTAXERR] Syntax error
../osvvm/ScoreboardPkg_int.vhd, 53
analysis-PreParsing
  
    generic map (
               ^
  Syntax error detected during VHDL parsing.

I have a script with the following:

mkdir -p worklib
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/*.vhd

And, synopsys_sim.setup file with:

WORK            > DEFAULT
DEFAULT         : ./worklib

VHDL_MODE       = 08
SMART_ORDER     = TRUE

[Tim]

I got it to compile now with one error.

Warning-[AGGRNULLRANGE] Null range
../osvvm/RandomPkg.vhd, 109
RANDOMPKG
  
    subtype NULL_RANGE_TYPE is integer range 0 downto 1 ;
                                                      ^
  Range 0 downto 1 is a null range.

Modified my build script

mkdir -p worklib
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/NamePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/OsvvmGlobalPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/TranscriptPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/TextUtilPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/AlertLogPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/RandomBasePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/SortListPkg_int.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/MessagePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/CoveragePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/RandomPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/VendorCovApiPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ResolutionPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/MemoryPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/OsvvmContext.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/TbUtilPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/VendorCovApiPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ScoreboardPkg_int.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ScoreboardGenericPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ScoreboardPkg_slv.vhd

Modified the synopsys_sim.setup file

WORK            > DEFAULT
OSVVM           > DEFAULT
DEFAULT         : ./worklib

[Tim]

Meant to say one warning in the previous message.

[Jim Lewis]

Hi Tim,
Sorry I missed your additional discussion.

This warning is ok. The code is legal VHDL code. It would be more obvious if they would print the message as:

Warning: NULL_RANGE_TYPE has a null range, Range 0 downto 1

Null ranges are legal. Often people end with them unintentionally, so the vendors decided to issue a warning. However, in the OSVVM packages they are a methodology that allows parameters to be not specified and still handled correctly.

Best Regards,
Jim

[Jim Lewis]

Your Script has a couple of things out of order. Specifically
VendorCovApiPkg.vhd must be compiled before CoveragePkg.vhd,
OsvvmContext.vhd must be compiled last (or almost last),
RandomPkg.vhd must be compiled before CoveragePkg.vhd,
ScoreboardGenericPkg.vhd must be compiled before ScoreboardPkg_int.vhd and ScoreboardPkg_slv.vhd.

Our compile script is osvvm.pro. I made the following match the
ordering in osvvm.pro.

mkdir -p worklib
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/NamePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/OsvvmGlobalPkg.vhd

vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/VendorCovApiPkg.vhd

vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/TranscriptPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/TextUtilPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/AlertLogPkg.vhd

vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/MessagePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/SortListPkg_int.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/RandomBasePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/RandomPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/CoveragePkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/MemoryPkg.vhd

vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ScoreboardGenericPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ScoreboardPkg_int.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ScoreboardPkg_slv.vhd

vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/ResolutionPkg.vhd
vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/TbUtilPkg.vhd

vhdlan -full64 -vhdl08 -verbose -nc ../osvvm/OsvvmContext.vhd

[Antonio Bergnoli]

And what about OSVVM-common?
i ‘m fighting with vcs for this error:

Error-[VHDL08-IMPL-SUBTYPE] VHDL-2008 Usage Not Supported
./src/StreamTransactionPkg.vhd, 198
STREAMTRANSACTIONPKG

signal TransactionRec : inout StreamRecType
^
Use of unbounded type or base type is not supported in this context.

And many many others of the same kind.
Ay sugggestion to make vcs happy?

[Jim Lewis]

Hi Antonio,
Ouch. Did you report the tool bug to Synopsys? Did they respond?

I would have to think about a work around. Maybe if generics were
added to the package to constrain the size of DataToModel, DataFromModel,
ParamToModel, and ParamFromModel – and they were sized to match the largest
item in the system, it should be ok – maybe after some simple model tweaks
(there is a ToTransaction and FromTransaction that resize).

The problem I see is that each different device in the system has different
requirements. UARTS have 8 bits of data and 3 bits of error injection,
vs AxiStream that supports multiple bytes of data and on item that is passed
via the Param field is the TUser which can be small or much larger than the
data.

[Jim Lewis]

A quick update. I am working with Synopsys on VCS. Things are looking up. I should have more news on this shortly.

In the upcoming 2021.09 release there are scripts to use the OSVVM scripts with VCS.

[Antonio Bergnoli]

Hi Jim,
i’m still fighting with osvvm and VCS S-2021.09-SP together, but i’m getting the same behaviour

[Jim Lewis]

Hi Antonio,
You will need their latest service pack for VCS. I think there was one in October. The hot-fixes they were providing me for testing did not get integrated until shortly after the 2021.09 release.

Best Regards,
Jim

[Antonio Bergnoli]

Thanks Jim, using the Service Pack 2 everithing works fine.
Best Regards
Antonio

[Antonio Bergnoli]

Hi Jim,
starting from the commit 66e31acb for the repository “Scripts” i discover that VCS does not work anymore, hence the
799f7963 is the last working commit. I was not able right now to submit a pull request, in any case i will try to investigate which is the root cause of that.

[Jim Lewis]

Hi Antonio,
I should be able to look into it shortly too. Also if it is a TCL error, you may need to update your TCL version.

Cheers,
Jim

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