for each connection in the dump of incorrect nets. This is
definitely critical to finding local swapping errors, and needs
to be incorporated into the non-debug mode, preferably as part of
the JSON file dump. But that's for later.
contents (previously wasn't done), and also added sorting for items with
non-matching names which have only one item in the group for each circuit
(so they must be matching in some sense). This makes the output a bit
more readable without re-enabling the compute-intensive sorting method
for non-matching entries.
This fixes crash on macos due to wrong hash() being linked in.
It also makes sure that proper function defs are declared and available
(as required by C99) to make compile possible in newer compilers (e.g.
Apple clang) and to some extend prevent similar linkage issues happening
again.
Changed line breaks in log and stdout to better differentiate subcircuits.
Added merged series device counts and differentiated from parallel merged device counts.
Added file number to disconnected net, merged count messages.
Changed black box errors to show file numbers instead of hard coded values.
Final error cell list changed from all on one line to one per line.
Removed redundant display in black box warning.
information for a non-matching pin in circuit1 and generates a
proxy pin in circuit2---there is some case where this is redundant,
I think, but I need to find the example.
continues to allow missing pins to match unconnected pins, but
*only* on subcircuits below the top level. This essentially forces
layouts to separate merged pins with metal resistors, although
there should be an option in magic's ext2spice routine that allows
"equiv" statements, when declaring equivalence of two ports, to be
replaced by a zero volt source or zero ohm ideal resistor.
pins on non-black-boxed circuits as it does not black-boxed circuits,
but specifically looking for pins that are disconnected on both sides,
since those do not appear in the node list and are not otherwise
handled. Otherwise, disconnected pins will appear to have disappeared
from the first netlist.
a final parallel or series combination needs to be done but there
are still multiple property records. The multiplier was being
incorrectly applied twice, causing an automatic mismatch in
parameter values.
of multiple devices during flattening, that will skip over a node
record at the end of a subcircuit call being flattened and therefore
remove it from the netlist.
list that it prints in the side-by-side element mismatch comparison
for an element, when there is no node record associated with the pin
connection. This makes the output clearer.
swapped, so that if pin names are swapped on the top level, netgen will
report this as a final error message. Otherwise, the mismatch is only
reported back in the pin list where it is not obvious.
add properties across multiple property records in the last matching
step, if there are still multiple properties and the values can be
combined. Previously, netgen had been assuming that there would only
be one property record left at this point, which is not true. This
shows up particularly for BSIM fingered devices, since "nf" is
ignored.
run to the end of the list of circuit elements. Also corrected
another issue caused by the flag to denote multiple no-connect pins,
which can be on an instance pin and so cannot share the data from the
instance record.
device with one or more no-connect pins. The flag that indicates a
no-connect pin was checked incorrectly, potentially causing obscure
and misleading property mismatch messages to be generated.
unconnected pins in the other netlist are marked as "(no pin)"
rather than "(no matching pin)". This allows a script parsint the
JSON file (e.g., count_lvs.py from qflow) to distinguish between a
real pin error and one that can be ignored.
without netgen noticing---this behavior got broken by an
exception for "black box" circuits, but failed to check if the
circuit really was marked as a "black box" or not. Fixing that
revealed another issue with verilog implicit pins. Both issues
have now been corrected.
other devices that do not have a "critical property" that determines
which properties can add together was flawed and messed up the sorting
of devices like transistors and resistors that do have a critical
property. Reworked the sorting order so that it makes sense for both
situations.
Also corrected a superficial issue with an attempt to print out an
instance name that doesn't exist. There is an underlying bug here
related to cells that have no pins and/or no contents which has not
been debugged. The fix just keeps netgen from segfaulting.
different additive properties (like transistor width) to combine;
this is totally wrong and may have been left over from code written
before the routine was split into simple combinations (add similar
devices) and agressive combinations (e.g., add widths together).
class during setup, for the purpose of generating some derived
value that is used for merging and sorting, such as area = l*w.
Note that this likely needs adjusting so that the expression is
evaluated but not replaced for the purpose of sorting, since the
values to the parameter may change after parallel and series
merging.
cause inexplicable output in case of a property error by showing a
netlist topography error instead of a property error (but the output
shows that the netlists match, and there is no reporting of any
property errors). This error was discovered while implementing a
better sorting method for parallel combination. The improved method
sorts on two properties rather than one, and so should not fall into
the error where, say, devices are sorted on W but have different L
for a device like a capacitor where no "critical" property is
specified (and other similar cases, although that is a common one).
parallel and series devices. This was a fairly major error
undermining the property sorting (the case where the same number
of devices are in parallel in both circuits and need to be sorted
by, e.g., width, prior to checking for matches).
sides of the output when presenting side-by-side results. This
matches up net or device names within a partition. Where net or
device names match, the contents are also aligned on either side.
I attempted to also do a "best match" of contents between sides,
but as this involves a lot of analyzing the contents, it is very
computationally expensive, and so the code has been disabled. It
could be added back in as an option. There are also various ways
to optimize it for speed.
pins for enabling parallel combinations, which could cause a crash.
Added a "-force" option to "equate pins" to allow pins to be matched
even on subcircuits that did not correctly match; this was done in
conjuction with an extra option to the "lvs" command "-noflatten="
to pass a list of cellname to not be flattened even if they do not
match. This is generally discouraged, as it prevents netgen from
resolving differences between layout and schematic hierarchy, but it
can be useful for checking that the hierarchy above a certain cell
is correct, given that if a subcell is really unmatched, then its
errors will keep propagating up the top level, making additional
errors hard to diagnose.
devices in parallel with unconnected pins would be confused with
N devices in parallel with those pins all tied together. This is
treated as a property error.
to generate incorrect results on occasion. The method to parallelize
cells with the same no-connect pins should avoid the worst-case
symmetry breaking that was previously plaguing the LVS of large
standard-cell layouts.
to go into an infinite loop and fill memory until it crashes, due
to a complete pin mismatch between devices causing one device to
have its pins removed and replaced with proxy pins.
introduced in revision 150 can result in an incorrect result
reporting a bad match where the match is actually good (as proven
by running the full symmetry breaking on the same netlist).
Because the fast symmetry breaking is orders of magnitude faster
for large circuits, and because the false positive result appears
to be rare, I have introduced a command "symmetry" to switch
methods between fast and full. So fast symmetry breaking can be
run unless the result fails on symmetry breaking, in which case
the method can be switched to full to see if the problem is a
false positive or not. This is not an ideal solution, and some
investigation is needed to determine if there is a way to apply
fast symmetry breaking without encountering a false positive
error.
the top level circuits to be declared matching with no errors even
though the pins do not match. "proxy pins" are fine for subcells
to detect cases where one subcell has an unused pin and the matching
subcell does not declare it, but that should not be allowed on the
top level, as it cannot be known whether the pin is unused or not.
breaking by property was only matching properties between circuits but
not within the same circuit, which is needed for correct symmetry
breaking. But the PropertyMatch() routine assumed that it is passed
one item from each circuit, leading to a segfault when running the
symmetry breaking within a single circuit. This has been fixed.
that are not declared in the verilog netlist because they don't
connect to anything, and their presence is not required by verilog
syntax) and the printing of proxy pins created to act as placeholders
for those implicit pins. Also removed the pinting of the "disconnected
pin" messages for black-box modules (since by definition they have
disconnected pins, because black-box modules have no contents).
black-box circuits, especially those coming from verilog netlists
where a pin does not need to be declared and is implicitly floating.
This prevents the need to have an explicit black-box entry for any
verilog module that may have an instance that does not declare all
the pin connections. Also corrected an error which causes mysterious
failures if a verilog netlist is read before a SPICE netlist,
because the former gets hashed case-sensitive and the latter changes
the hashing to case-insensitive. Modified to force the SPICE
netlist to be treated case-sensitive, which may cause errors, but
is consistent with the reverse order handling, and doesn't cause
unexplained errors.
symmetry of all elements in all symmetric partitions, rather than
(as previously done) all elements in each partition, before re-
running iterations to convergence. This solves the problem of
having a very large number of partitions with a few elements each
taking a long time to run.
automorphisms so that it arbitrarily assigns all pairs from
circuit1 and circuit2 at once rather than assigning one pair at
a time and rerunning to convergence. I'm not sure of the validity
of this, other than that I have never seen a circuit fail to match
after resolving automorphisms, leading me to believe that the way
the symmetry breaking is done is irrelevant.
long run-times even when there are no properties to check. Corrected
a problem with SPICE and verilog netlist reading which arbitrarily
replaces file extensions even when a file extension is given,
resulting in reading the wrong file.
Tim Edwards
Kamyar Mohajerani
D. Mitch Bailey