to force internal units to be used; this usage is now deprecated
and needed to be changed to the "units" command. Also: Fixed a
separate issue with getting both "view bbox" and "view get" to
return values in the currently selected units. Also: Fixed an
issue with "property" when setting a property to a list passed as
a single value (e.g., "property FIXED_BBOX [box values]"), which
needed to null the string after each value.
converted to the new PropertyRecord type. Since this was in the
CIFPropRecordPath() subroutine, which has always been problematic
and generally useless, I took the opportunity to make that function
dependent on an option set by "gds savepaths true", with the option
set to "false" by default, so "path" properties will no longer be
created from GDS input unless the option is manually set to "true".
Also: Found that the returned boolean from "box exists" is
sometimes getting overwritten with a NULL result, causing a spurious
Tcl error messages to pop up. I could not find where this
overwriting happens (probably in a tag callback), so I just took the
hack approach of converting a NULL result to "false", which is always
safe to do.
new properties, so created a "property compat" setting and made
it TRUE by default. This makes magic print all properties as
type "string" on output into a .mag file. Which is fine, since
it converts all values to the right type on input anyway. The
only thing that backwards-compatibility mode prevents is user-
defined properties that are not strings. That is a very rare case
and can be done by turning off comptability mode. Some time in
the future compatibility mode can be changed to be default false,
but there's probably no real need to do so.
are handled. Properties were previously only character strings,
which had become cumbersome because properties were being used for
mask hints and bounding boxes, with the necessity of constantly
converting values from string to integer and back, which can cause
a performance impact as well as just being messy. The main difference
to the command is the addition of an optional first keyword argument
for the property type, which can be "string", "integer", "dimension",
or "double". All types except "string" can consist of multiple
values. Multiple values can be specified as separate arguments on
the command line, so that, for example, values of FIXED_BBOX or
MASKHINTS_* no longer need to be quoted. In addition, this completes
the handling of "units" implemented recently, as all properties of
the type "dimension" can be entered in the current units, will display
in the current units, and will scale with the database.
(1) Fixed an error that was introduced in version 8.3.590 with
a patch that should have been applied only for the case of
BJT devices, and not for MOSFETs. The patch will cause
devices generated by "device mosfet" or "device asymmetric"
to be read incorrectly from a .ext file during "ext2spice".
(2) Fixed an error in the tech file reading, where using CDL
parameters on a capacitor device would cause the tech file
loader to print an error message. The parsing was correct
and only the message should not have been printed.
(3) Added a new feature with the new command option "extract
do unique". This replaces the "extract unique" command by
running the same code within the extraction, but has the
additional effect of reverting the label changes afterward.
This prevents the user from inadvertently writing the
altered labels back to the database file.
section of the tech file, which can be used to alter the layer
connectivity tables from the default. This can be used, for
example, to disconnect substrate and well from taps, to
generate a netlist that checks for soft-connect errors.
since this is a common artifact of foundry cells and almost
always incompatible with magic. Modified the "port" command to
allow "port make <index>" on a label where other labels of the
same text already have the same index. Removed deprecated
documentation and added some missing documentation, such as an
explanation of the "ext2spice subcircuit auto" option.
command, but with some critical differences, since the "crash"
command is designed for crash backups. "crash" will save in a
temp file and removes the file after a successful recovery.
"archive" can be used at any time to make a complete snapshot of
a layout in a single file, or to read back that snapshot.
There is a "writeall" option that will make a snapshot including
layout of all read-only (PDK) cells.
X and Y values, in which case the selection is moved to the
current pointer position. This allows a different implementation
of the "copy" command as "select move; select keep", which avoids
the problem that "copy" has of modifying the selection with layer
interactions with the existing layout.
arguments unambiguous, and to allow coordinates to be given in
any units. To do this, the (seldom if ever used) passing of a
label as a reference point was changed to require the "label"
keyword before the label name, avoiding the code having to
disambiguate arguments from label text. This now makes it
possible to specify the coordinates in microns, lambda, etc.,
units.
Was looking to implement this feature and found it was already
implemented but is a secret feature.
Updated documentation and modified implementation so it is possible
a user can discover the feature via usage such as "quit -help -invalid"
like other commands.
that no nets will be checked for antenna gate and diffusion area,
and no antenna properties will be output to the LEF file. This can
greatly speed up LEF output file generation for a large design.
Thank you to Tamas Hubai for the code patch.
the time the option was implemented), and also implemented (and
documented!) a similar command option "extract stepsize" for
reporting or changing the extraction step size.
unrelated nets to be captured in the same selection, due to the
use of the label bounding box instead of the label rectangle.
The bounding box is used for display only and should not be used
for connectivity.
meaning of the MAG record in GDS files. Most available GDS
documentation is decidedly vague about what MAG means. Most
layout tools seem to interpret a MAG of 1 as corresponding to a
text height of 1um. However, there are a few tools that
interpret it as 1 centimicron, and there's no reason to assume
that any given interpretation is correct. "gds magscale" allows
the scale to be redefined.
"pick x y" which acts like "cursor", but operates on a database
coordinate instead of a pointer coordinate. Made a few other
corrections to the command logging code so that it produces
valid output when the log file is sourced.
commands that make use of the pointer position have an equivalent
command that operates solely on layout coordinates, or otherwise
avoids needing a pointer position. Added the command option
"down <instance>" to avoid using the pointer to disambiguate
selections. Added the command option "select ... at x y" to
do paint or cell selections at a specific coordinate instead of
the pointer position.
of the "edit" command that takes an instance name as an argument.
This is the first of a small series of command extensions to
provide the capability to replace any command that is dependent on
the pointer position with an equivalent command that is not, for
the purpose of removing pointer and screen coordinate dependencies
from the log file created by "logcommands".
nets to be avoided for running antenna gate and diffusion area
checks when doing "lef write", which is to check if the pin of
the net is flagged with use "power" or use "ground". This avoids
the need to use the (recently added) "lef nocheck" option (although
that still exists as an additional way to control which nets do and
do not get checked).
been broken ever since moving to the Tcl/Tk wrapped version. Added
some new features that allow background commands from the window
handling (like pointer tracking) to be omitted from the log file
via a suspend/resume function. Added a header file and a few
commands at the top of the log file that align the log file contents
with the screen and box state at the start of logging. This makes
a log file which can be "played back" by sourcing it from the magic
console prompt. Per request from Harald Pretl.
"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.
with "extract do local" now being equivalent to "extract path .".
This allows extraction files to be put in a subdirectory and not
clog up the current working directory. Also: Fixed some behavior
around the use of "ext2spice -p <path>" so that it (1) works, and
(2) is compatible with the new "extract path". Since the ext2spice
and ext2sim commands are effectively independent of the primary
extraction, the "-p" option is needed to correspond to the use of
"extract path". Hopefully this is seen as only a minor inconvenience.
that aren't actually handled by the "lef write" command. The three
mentions are "LEFsource", "LEFuse", and "LEFshape", all of which
refer to names of pin properties, not macro properties. These
mentions were probably left over from early work.
"cif *hier write disable" and "cif *array write disable" commands
for a specific cell def and its descendents. The revision ensures
that all descendents apply the override. The "cif write" command
uses a stack instead of recursion, which makes it difficult to
apply the same method. Currently the method only works for the
"gds write" command, and implementing the feature for "cif write"
is deemed not worth the effort.
of a label from the command line. Also fixed a long-standing
irritation that "setlabel" would change the properties of a label
in the edit cell but not in the selection itself, which would
cause the label to be drawn both with the original properties
in the selection and the new properties in the edit cell. Now
both views will track the same changes.
tech file to correct the underlying problem with the SkyWater
sky130 process in which a different layer/purpose pair is used
for TEXTTYPE and DATATYPE for the same layer. Previously, all
output from magic writes the same pair for both when writing a
port label. The new method preserves existing syntax, although
there are some differences based on what order the "port"
statement appears relative to other types for the same layer.
should have been done a long time ago! Allows an instance to be
flattened in place inside a cell def, which otherwise requires
a complicated set of commands to do. Also: Modified the polygon
handling routine from the previous commit so that it correctly
removes the polygon cell defs after flattening them into the
parent cell.
attempt is made to write an abstract view to GDS. This behavior can
be overridded with the new command option "gds abstract [enable|disable]".
Also: Corrected extraction to allow split tiles to be set as the
reference tile for a node. Previously this was allowed only if the
tile was the first to be searched, but that can cause different tiles to
be marked as the reference depending on where the search starts,
resulting in different names for the same node in .ext files, which is
bad. Also: Modified the LEF annotation to avoid bad entries in the LEF
that would create layers in the layout where none exist.
calculation of the area to check for output and the clip box
does not reduce the size of any layer associated with the
fixed bounding box declared by the FIXED_BBOX property.
flattening based on cells which have a property "flatten". Also:
Modified the DEF read and write to convert DIEAREA into a
FIXED_BBOX property. This solves issues with placing of components
from DEF, when those components may not have have come from place &
route and may not have P&R bounding boxes. Also: Fixed the
documentation for the "dump" command, which was missing the optional
orientation in the description.
Compression levels of the output can be controlled with the "gds
compress [<value>]" command, where <value> 0 (default) is uncompressed
output, 6 is "normal" gzip compression, and 9 is maximum compression.
which instead of defining a device or subcircuit that exists inside
the cell, instead redefines the cell itself as a device or subcircuit
model that exists in the PDK. This is used where a specific layout
subcell has its own associated device definition in the PDK. Instead
of the "device" property value being the line that gets generated for
a device in the subcells .ext file, the property value should be the
word "primitive" optionally followed by any parameters that need to
be passed to the subcircuit call.
"gds datestamp" for LEF reads. When set to non-default, all cell
definitions created from LEF macros will be given the specified
timestamp, which allows the stamps of abstract views to match the
stamps of full views, preventing issues of updated timestamps
whenever a layout is switched between views.
"writeall force <cell>" is used but <cell> doesn't exist, and (2)
to add options "writeall modified" and "writeall noupdate" (which
may or may not be useful).
R. Timothy Edwards
Darryl L. Miles