Modelsim simulation progress in batch/command line mode?

[M. Hamed]

Is there a way I can get ModelSim to display the time progress of the
simulation when it's running in command line/batch mode similar to
what it would do at the bottom of the GUI window?

Thank you.

[Andreas Ehliar]

Put something like the following in a TCL script:
proc printsimstate {} {
global now
global UserTimeUnit
echo "Simulator time is $now, timescale is $UserTimeUnit"
after 5000 printsimstate
}
after 5000 printsimstate

I haven't tested it much since I just wrote it, but it seems to work
fairly ok.

/Andreas

[Jonathan Bromley]

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:44:18 +0000 (UTC),
Andreas Ehliar <ehl...@lysator.liu.se> wrote:

>On 2007-04-25, M. Hamed <mhs...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Is there a way I can get ModelSim to display the time progress of the
>> simulation when it's running in command line/batch mode similar to
>> what it would do at the bottom of the GUI window?
>
>
>Put something like the following in a TCL script:
>proc printsimstate {} {
> global now
> global UserTimeUnit
> echo "Simulator time is $now, timescale is $UserTimeUnit"
> after 5000 printsimstate
>}
>after 5000 printsimstate

Andreas,

nice, but be aware that it will leave an "after" action lying around;
if you pause the sim (or it reaches a breakpoint) you will continue
to get "Simulator time is..." messages spitting out of the console
every five seconds.

This seems to be closer to a robust solution, although you might
also want to provide a new timed version of the "continue"
command too. Just source this Tcl script into ModelSim
before running the sim, and then use "trun" instead of "run"
to start the simulation.

# Smarter version of "run" that displays timings as it runs
proc trun {args} {
# Start the periodic runtime display
after 2000 printSimTime
# Do the usual run command
eval run $args
}
#
# Periodic time display, stops itself when the
# run is stopped or interrupted
proc printSimTime {} {
echo "time = $::now"
if { [string equal running [runStatus]] } {
after 2000 printSimTime
}
}

In my own experiments I've found that the value of "now" that this
code reports is not very reliable - presumably, thanks to the very
heavy CPU loading caused by a busy simulation, things don't always
get updated as promptly as you might hope. Even so, it's
better than nothing.
--
Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how
VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * e * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Project Services

Doulos Ltd., 22 Market Place, Ringwood, BH24 1AW, UK
jonathan...@MYCOMPANY.com
http://www.MYCOMPANY.com

The contents of this message may contain personal views which
are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.

[Terry Brown]

Is there a reason people don't suggest just using an always block in the
test bench?

For example, I use:

//this is a status heartbeat for batch mode operation
integer microseconds;
reg heartbeat;
always #10000 microseconds = microseconds + 10;
always @ (microseconds)
if (heartbeat)
$display("%d us",microseconds);

This has the advantage on not requiring tcl (and the scripting is an
enhanced, pay for it option), and is portable to other simulators.

Terry Brown
Tyzx, Inc.

[Andreas Ehliar]

["Followup-To:" header set to comp.arch.fpga.]

On 2007-04-26, Terry Brown <tbr...@tyzx.com> wrote:
> Is there a reason people don't suggest just using an always block in the
> test bench?
>
> For example, I use:
>
> //this is a status heartbeat for batch mode operation
> integer microseconds;
> reg heartbeat;
> always #10000 microseconds = microseconds + 10;
> always @ (microseconds)
> if (heartbeat)
> $display("%d us",microseconds);
>
> This has the advantage on not requiring tcl (and the scripting is an
> enhanced, pay for it option), and is portable to other simulators.

The major advantage of using the TCL based approach is that you are sure
that your simulation status will be printed with the same frequency,
(more or less depending on the scheduling of the after command in TCL)
regardless of CPU speed and design complexity.

On the other hand, your approach is more useful in general since you
are able to print much more interesting data than the simulation time
such as for example the number of transactions your testbench has
performed.

/Andreas

[NigelE]

ModelSim SE and Questa users can use the JobSpy tool to monitor and
interact with batch jobs, including those running under LSF and Grid
Engine load sharing software.

One of the available JobSpy commands is 'now', which prints the
current simulation time.

Have a look at the 'Monitoring Simulations with JobSpy' chapter in the
User's Manual

- Nigel

[M. Hamed]

Thank you. This seems to work well. I was wondering if it's possible
to format the time display to display in a certain unit like us or ns.