best tcl-book for EDA-Tools
Thomas Rettig
can anyone tell me, wich are the best TCL-books, to help
me writing scipts in EDA-Tools ?
The language should be english or german.
Thanks,
Thomas
Jonathan Bromley
We offer courses on using Tcl for EDA but we have not found any
good general-purpose books that cover this area.
The big problem, I think, is that any book would quickly become
out-of-date. When you try to use Tcl to script EDA tools, you
have 2 problems:
1. (easy) - how to know enough Tcl to do the job
2. (much harder) - how to learn all the hundreds of new commands
that each EDA tool adds to Tcl
For example, the synthesis tool Leonardo Spectrum adds around
600 commands to Tcl. Most of these commands are not interesting
for users, but are intended for internal use within the tool.
You probably need to know about 50 commands. The question is,
which 50 ??!! And of course these extra commands will increase
with each new version of the tool, and they are different for
all your different EDA tools - simulator, synthesis, timing
analysis etc.
One very important tool, Synopsys Design Compiler, adds a whole
new concept to Tcl - "collections", a way to group items in
its internal design database so that you can then apply various
Tcl query commands to those items.
If you don't know Tcl very much, you probably need to come on
a course like ours. Visit our website for details - we have
an office in Hannover. Our course teaches you the basics of
Tcl and shows you how to make use of it within various EDA
tools.
If you already know Tcl but you want to apply it to your own
EDA applications, it may be better to go on the tool vendor's
training courses. Our experience suggests that these courses
try to teach you the commands that exist within the tool, but
they are not very good for learning Tcl from scratch.
Our technical website www.doulos.com/knowhow/tcltk has a few
examples that may give you some good ideas.
You should also look at www.tclforeda.net which is maintained
by Alexander Gnusin. He has lots of examples, mainly related
to Synopsys tools, that may be useful.
--
Jonathan Bromley, Consultant
DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how
VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Verification * Project Services
Doulos Ltd. Church Hatch, 22 Market Place, Ringwood, Hampshire, BH24 1AW, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1425 471223 mail: jonathan...@doulos.com
Fax: +44 (0)1425 471573 Web: http://www.doulos.com
The contents of this message may contain personal views which
are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.
Jonathan Bromley
obvious to most readers here:
EDA = Electronics Design Automation = simulation and design tools
Tcl is utterly pervasive as the scripting front-end for all serious
EDA tools. I guess that's just a nepotism thing - after all,
John Ousterhout's team at Berkeley was working on integrated circuit
layout tools.
Chang Li
"Jonathan Bromley" <jona...@oxfordbromley.u-net.com> wrote in message
news:b3fqqv$bsk$1$8302...@news.demon.co.uk...
> hi Thomas,
>
...
>
> For example, the synthesis tool Leonardo Spectrum adds around
> 600 commands to Tcl. Most of these commands are not interesting
> for users, but are intended for internal use within the tool.
> You probably need to know about 50 commands. The question is,
> which 50 ??!! And of course these extra commands will increase
> with each new version of the tool, and they are different for
> all your different EDA tools - simulator, synthesis, timing
> analysis etc.
600 commands? Did they use subcommands?
Are the API (commands) well organized?
Chang
Jonathan Bromley
[Me:]
> > For example, the synthesis tool Leonardo Spectrum adds around
> > 600 commands to Tcl.
> 600 commands? Did they use subcommands?
> Are the API (commands) well organized?
Embarrassed cough - I exaggerated - it's actually about 410
commands, and some 250 Tcl procs to group those commands into
commonly-used idioms. The figures are broadly similar for
other tools of the same class.
I have no wish to pass judgement on the designers of the
synthesis tools; the technology is only just this side of
magical, and the very smart guys that implement it are
entitled to an occasional peccadillo at the scripting
level. On the other hand, command names like
pr_max_hack_for_win_step1
don't inspire confidence at first glance :-)
Like I said, only a handful of these commands are likely
to be of interest to application users. Those "useful"
commands are indeed pretty well organised.
Peter Dalgaard BSA
> whoops, forgot to mention something that is probably not
> obvious to most readers here:
>
> EDA = Electronics Design Automation = simulation and design tools
...and especially confusing for statisticians who work with
Exploratory Data Analysis techniques!
--
O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3
c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N
(*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dal...@biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
Karl W. Pfalzer
If you're new to Tcl, I would recommend:
Tcl and the Tk Toolkit -- by John K. Ousterhout; Paperback
While it's a bit dated, (c)1994 and a few revs behind; it is **very well**
written and a great
introduction.
I followed up (a few years later) with
Practical Programming in Tcl and Tk (3rd Edition) -- by Brent B. Welch;
Paperback
which is a great reference; esp. if you want to delve into "extending tcl".
I did a search on "tcl" at www.amazon.com to get the above references.
BTW: I, too, am an EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tool user (Synopsys
and Modelsim tools), and a really big fan of Tcl! You might find some more
info at: www.tclforeda.net
"Thomas Rettig" <t.re...@beckhoff.de> wrote in message
news:b3fe2n$1kib31$1...@ID-178620.news.dfncis.de...