Here are the rest of the entries for the Q4 2009 contest:
Entry #1
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Track 'X' in a simulation
How was the challenge solved?
Using Verdi, I could track rapidly 'X' back to their source then identify non-initialized signals and correct them.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Faster debug -> more time for other work, and for my family!!!
Entry #2
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Huge sized database needed from the customer with all the information required for debug.
How was the challenge solved?
FSDB of course, thanks to SpringSoft, limited the dump size, still had all the required information.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Both the sides were happy getting to the resolution.
Entry #3
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Tracing an X' in the gate simulation
How was the challenge solved?
use the Verdi behavioral analysis and trace X
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
It very efficient and saves LOT of time
Entry #4
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Huge designs, Loads of Design Data, Debugging would take huge time
How was the challenge solved?
Using Verdi debugging features cut down all this time drastically
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Back home early
Entry #5
What challenge needed to be overcome?
We have to provide the Verification IP to customer quickly and we need to debug all the bugs quickly.
How was the challenge solved?
All the bugs were fixed in less time with the help of SpringSoft Novas Verdi Debug System.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
We were able to provide the Verification IP to customer quickly at the specified date.
Entry #6
What challenge needed to be overcome?
I want to compare the waveforms sent by the customer to my existing design.
How was the challenge solved?
Novas Verdi provides great feature to compare the different waveforms
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
It takes very little time to compare the waveforms. Thanks for the Verdi
Entry #7
What challenge needed to be overcome?
I was observing a FSDB dump in Novas (Verdi) tool and needed to view the origin of 2 signals without regenerating the dump.
How was the challenge solved?
Then, I was searching for the various tabs/buttons for this and then, my friend told me that there's an option for viewing the "Logical operations" in Verdi. So, it solved my problem.
Apart from this, Novas also provides Conditional comparison of waveforms, complex event search, time range extraction, Multiple windows viewing using Set Active.
Also, Verdi helps to view the 2-D memory contents very easily which is not supported by other waveform viewers.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
I felt very efficient just because of these special features gifted by Verdi :-)
Entry #8
What challenge needed to be overcome?
I was spending a lot time at office due to a lot of bugs in design so it takes too much time to debug all bugs.
How was the challenge solved?
When I used SpringSoft Novas Verdi debugging tool, it make debugging easy. Now I reach home at proper time.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Now I am living my social life properly.
Entry #9
What challenge needed to be overcome?
We develop verification IP for the industry standard interfaces, and different user worldwide use different simulator e.g. modelsim, VCS and Ncverilog, so we have to create and deal with different waveform dump i.e *.dump,*.trn, *.vcd/vpd etc. The challenge was to have a single format with small size dump, supported by all simulators
How was the challenge solved?
This challenge was solved by using FSDB format and nWave utility. Ease of integration of FSDB with all the leading simulator made it so easy for us to handle only FSDB dump. Also the capabilities/efficiency of nWave is such that it didn't take much time to migrate to FSDB/ nWave.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
It was great using the compact FSDB format with all the simulator. Also the nWave features and capablities make it very useful product for debugging.
Entry #10
What challenge needed to be overcome?
To debug wrong X values in simulation results.
How was the challenge solved?
Using trace X and trace drivers in Verdi.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
good
Entry #11
What challenge needed to be overcome?
One of our customer was using nc and I have to check for the memory but the nc does not provide the facility to see the memory.
And main issue was customer has to upload the .trn file but the size of the .trn file was very much.
How was the challenge solved?
Then I called the customer to see the dump the waveform in fsdb. So by using the fsdb we were able to see the memory.
But the fsdb files having the smaller size.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
So finally customer and we both were delighted.
By getting the smaller files our ftp can receive more files from customer (i.e. not having the space problem)
Entry #12
What challenge needed to be overcome?
For debugging the huge customer design, I need waveform dump from customer. Dump size with the current simulator was touching GB of size. Customer was not permitted to use ftp or any other sharing software. So work was halted.
How was the challenge solved?
We generated the fsdb dump using Novas Verdi, now log was in few MBs, and now customer was able to send the fsdb file via email :-)
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
I get appreciation from manger because I was able to find the cause of the bug in customer design.
Entry #13
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Large size of dump created
How was the challenge solved?
The dump created by vcs and ncverilog is of very large size, consuming a lot of space, but the dump created by novas is of very smaller size comparative to those created by above viewers. As many times while running the simulation, the dump created is of more than 30GB and the system available to us are of 60GB, so many times the simulation stopped because of less space available on device, so I had to remove something and then rerun the simulation again, consuming a lot of time and lead to very much inconvenience. But after using Novas tool, I haven't encountered the problem of less space available on device again. Thanks to Novas!!!
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Now to send dump, we don't use ftp and directly use our support portal. Earlier for large dump, we used to use our ftp (which was created only for sending release to customers), but now ftp is only used for the purpose its created for, and portal is used for sending or receiving dump as dump created by Novas is of smaller size. Really Novas helped a lot in this regards.
Entry #14
What challenge needed to be overcome?
It was needed to find the bug in the DUT under the verification project.
How was the challenge solved?
I generated all the possible test scenarios to check the functionality of the DUT.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
It gave me immense pleasure when the bugs reported by me were accepted by the customer.
Entry #15
What challenge needed to be overcome?
First I thought we have done our Engineering because we just hate our PERSONAL LIFE and can't live without tension.
We just love to debug the LIFE and the code written by one of us only.
Actually I forgot when I laughed last time.
How was the challenge solved?
Eventually My friend told me about this tool then I realized that this tool is crazy and lot what I want to do.
It's like a revolution in the field of debugging.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Now I am much happier and also got changed, enjoying my life and got that the LIFE is not only means debugging.
It helped my family more than me because now I can be part of some family functions
Entry #16
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Debugging the huge design was big challenge.
How was the challenge solved?
Verdi had all the cool options.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Saved all my time, and I could enjoy the time saved.
Entry #17
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Bigger designs were hard to debug.
How was the challenge solved?
SpringSoft Verdi made debugging easy.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Job done well in time.
Entry #18
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Biggest challenge is to getting to the root of any error.
How was the challenge solved?
Verdi/Debussy makes all this very easy.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Big time saving
Entry #19
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Verification Challenge to verify DUT by firing testcases.
I have so many testcase to fire with each cases required to be run individually. Compilation time and Simulation time is taking so long. It will take me days to run simulation.
How was the challenge solved?
Compile the code once and reuse of compiled code to run the simulation. This saves the compilation time.
Thanks to the Springsoft simulation solution to solve the long simulation time.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
The simulation was completed on time.
Yeah I have completed my task on time. Very efficient verification of my DUT.
Entry #20
What challenge needed to be overcome?
There was a support issue which was very critical and was required to get resolved because the DUT was in final phase of verification and customer was in a doubt whether DUT has the mentioned bug or not. Our customer uses NC Simulator and hence was only to send the trn format dump which is of large size.
How was the challenge solved?
Then I suggested customer that he can send us the dump in fsdb format because it is of smaller size and will get uploaded on FTP very fast as compared to trn format dump.
So he has sent us the FSDB format dump through FTP. So it was uploaded in much lesser time and also less FTP space is utilized.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Through Novas, I analyzed the dump. Actually Memory Dumping was required in order to solve the case which is only possible in Novas. So dump was analyzed and resolved in much lesser time. Had it been other format file, more time would be required for Uploading and downloading.
Regarding BUG of DUT: There was a bug in DUT but it also gets resolved due to memory dumping facility available in Novas.
Customer was so very delighted that he gave me an excellent feedback and also stated that in future I will be uploading only FSDB format dump so that we can debug the issue in a better manner as we did for this case.
Entry #21
What challenge needed to be overcome?
I want to see the value of a given location in a 2D array.
How was the challenge solved?
Previously I was using virsim and vsim but I can't see the elements of 2D array. There are lots of advantages of using Verdi like
1) Small dump size.
2) Easy to use
3) You can see the value of define by just pointing the mouse cursor on it.
4) Complete debug package
5) can browse source code
6) Assertion based features
Using Verdi is a great experience.
Thanks.
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Now I am switched to Verdi and I am fully satisfied with Verdi. Thanks to you guys and keep it up the good work
Entry #22
What challenge needed to be overcome?
Faster debugging
pattern location on a bus
logic creation in run time
How was the challenge solved?
Since FSDB itself creates a very fast format of waveform to view.
by looking/searching for a pattern on a bus i was able to find out the movement of data on different lanes from mixed data.solved the problem of finding skew in different lanes and then with these when data lanes gets interchanged i was able to recognize that where the data has moved and where it should have gone.
while implementing state machines i was able to create diffrent combinations and permutation of signals and recognised which one is creating fault at which level.
To find out out fault and if there is proper transition of states
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
I got a super hero which helped me out debugging fastly not only by its light weight format but also by helping me out to look for particular pattern on bus and then helped me out in designing sate machine further. this was really a thing which was better and above my expectation really a super hero
Entry #23
What challenge needed to be overcome?
One day our customer has reported a bug that out bfm is not triggering the event
How was the challenge solved?
But when i checked the same onto the waveform then i found that it's getting triggered but the actual path given by the customer was wrong
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
So the tool helped me to solve the bug and i was able to closed the request open by the customer.
Thanks For that
Entry #24
What challenge needed to be overcome?
I want to see 2-D array in dump for debugging purpose which is very difficult in other simulators like VSIM, NCSIM and VCS.
How was the challenge solved?
I request customer to send the dump in fsdb format which i opened in nWave , which allows me to see the 2-D signals/memory in waveform
What satisfaction did you receive by solving the challenge?
Easier debugging make me resolving issue and make my customer happy .
So if customer satisfied, i am satisfied
