report it after "Failure to read in entire sub-tree". This will
not report every failing cell (since it quits reading after the
first failure) but will avoid the existing issue of printing
nothing and leaving the user with no feedback as to which cell
was the problem.
because commands issued during initialization set the DRC status
in a way that causes DRCContinuous() to return immediately.
Also: Implemented a slightly different method when automatically
finding the tech file from the input .mag file that loads a
technology .magicrc file if one exists. If not, just the .tech
file is loaded. This replaces the method of a previous commit
that loads the technology .tcl script. The .magicrc file will
include the .tcl script but does other things as well.
"drc printrules". Implemented a new "drc" command option called
"drc ignore", which can be used to suppress reporting of specific
rules, for both "drc why" and "drc find". This can help with
finding an error buried among a large number of other errors.
previous behavior that had inadvertently been changed. In recent
versions, "load <absolute_path> -dereference" would incorrectly
apply the dereferencing to <absolute_path> rather than just its
subcells. Cleaned up the code around DBCellRead() in the process,
so everything is more straightforward (although probably more
could be done in that regard).
dereferencing, and making the behavior of "load" on the command
line (i.e., loading a cell from a file) the same as the
behavior of loading a cell as a result of expanding an unloaded
instance. In both cases, if "load -dereference" is used, and
a cell does not exist in any search path but does exist in the
original location, without dereferencing, then the cell will be
loaded from the original location. Also: Corrected an error
that has existed since adding the capability to read compressed
files, which causes magic to crash when attempting to run the
"crash recover" command (because that routine was mixing
compressed and regular file stream calls).
to stop the search whenever a cell is not found. Used this to implement
a new option for GDS writes, "gds undefined allow|disallow" (default
"disallow") controls whether or not GDS with undefined references will
be allowed to be written. Similarly affects CIF and LEF writes, extraction,
and DRC (when running "drc check" from the top).
the handling of subcell instances generally. Previously it would check
the interaction between neighboring cells in an array without regard to
any material in the parent cell which might remove those errors;
consequently, the array would have to be DRC clean by itself in order for
the parent cell to show as DRC clean. The array check has been moved
inside the DRCInteractionCheck() routine, so that it runs only where
arrayed instances do not interact with anything else. Within interaction
areas, the area is flattened and checked, so the array check is not
needed.
processes "interaction areas". This should eliminate weirdnesses
where errors will fail to show up in a subcell that does not
interact with paint or other subcells in the top level edit cell.
These errors cannot be reported directly in the top level cell,
but a new error message has been created to direct the user to
check the subcell for errors. Also: Modified the toolkit procedures
to force DRC to be run on newly created or modified parameterized
cell layouts. There is some oddity about the process that causes
DRC errors to be delayed unless a print statement is put before the
DRC check; I would like to investigate this further.
the rule is a normal database rule or a CIF-DRC rule. For the latter,
the flag is used when substituting for escape strings in the "why"
rule explanation to produce the correct value in microns.
DRC records contain an index into a string array instead of containing
a copy of a string. This is preliminary to changing the way the DRC
error plane is painted, so that the types painted will mark the error
type. This will (1) allow "drc why" to simply scan the DRC error
plane rather than running the DRC engine, (2) allow DRC errors to be
counted by area rather than by tile, and (3) let the DRC count be the
same whether done by "drc listall why" or "drc count".
which had been changed a few months back to remove the individual
cell count and only list the top level cell. The behavior has been
changed a bit so that "list" returns values for the top level cell
only, but "listall" returns a complete list. "drc list count total"
gives the DRC count for the top cell, but "drc listall count total"
gives the DRC count for everything (probably not very useful).
Also: Implemented a behavior by request to automatically removed
the (UNNAMED) cell whenever a new cell is loaded and the (UNNAMED)
cell has not been modified.
to be investigated here. I am no longer sure why I removed the
cell search from DRC count, but it appears that the cell search is
non-functional, and it should be determined why. There is no
particular reason not to have a DRC count search. It could be
implemented such that "list" vs. "listall" counts the top cell vs.
all cells. First it must be determined why there are no subcell
counts.
only at the time of running the command "load". But cells are generally
loaded only on an as-needed basis, so the dereferencing option must be
saved as a flag in the cell and honored whenever its subcells are expanded
or otherwise read at a later time.
categorized by error type and scrolled through conveniently. However,
it needs work dealing with finding the actual error bounds. The
"DRC count" counts tiles, which is tile-plane-geometry-specific, and
"DRC listall why" fractures errors both over tiles and over the square
areas that the interactive DRC splits the layout into, for performance.
The DRC error plane needs to be changed to hold different types for
each error class, so that errors can be scanned by boundary instead of
by tile (work to be done).
rid of redundant port entries in subcircuits. There is still an outstanding
issue as to whether nodes and connections need to be recursively iterated
to the hierarchy bottom. The current fix corrected the test case. Also,
added a "-dereference" option to the "load" command to revert to the
original behavior of using only search paths from "addpath" when searching
for files to load.
DRC rules. The substitutions are specified by "%d" for the main
rule distance, "%c" for the corner rule distance (sometimes
interpreted differently; e.g., as width in the widespacing rule),
and "%a" for rule area (e.g., maxarea rule). In addition to
simplifying the process of writing rule violation strings, the
benefits are twofold: (1) The output is in meaningful physical
units, but in the case of SCMOS technology, will scale properly
depending on the selected GDS output style, and in the case of
all technologies, will scale properly with internal grid division;
and (2) when using lambda, but where rules are given in vendor
minimum dimensions, the rules will be based on the lambda rule
approximation (that is, distances will be rounded to the nearest
lambda but reported in microns). Behavior is unchanged from
previous versions for "why" strings not using the defined
substitution sequences.
errors from the area checked must use the same area as is used
by the interaction checker to recompute errors. In earlier code,
both these areas were much larger than necessary. In the last
code update, the area to make revised checks was reduced, but
the area cleared of errors was not, resulting in errors that
would disappear from the layout as paint changes were made, until
a full "drc check" was run again. This code commit makes the
areas the same again so that no errors are lost.
much larger area than necessary to the interaction check, and
the other which failed to scale the tech halo distance down
after scaling all the rules. Both of these led to huge areas
of a layout being unnecessarily checked when even a tiny part
of the layout was modified. Corrected behavior matches
expectations for interactive DRC response.
avoid the problem where subcells violate DRC themselves but do
not violate DRC in the context of the parent (i.e., the parent
adds metal to avoid minimum area error), DRC errors in subcells
are neither counted nor displayed, but they remain present in
the subcell database. The DRC check enumerates all subcell
errors as mandatory check areas in DRCFindInteractions(), so
that those areas are always counted with the interaction areas.
Previously, if a subcell violated a DRC rule by itself, that
error would be counted and displayed in the parent even if the
parent had paint causing the error to no longer exist.
Tim Edwards