Et4293/ CadenceLocalGuide

Cadence Local Guide

Version: 1

Introduction

This document explains the particulars of the local installation of Cadence that we will be using. It is version 5.1.41, the installation tree is at

/opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41

The software should be running on each machine where /opt/cad is mounted.

While the Cadence documentation is presenting some example pathnames, this document will list the corresponding pathnames for the local installation, as well as provide other notes and explanations to the documentation and the usage of Cadence for the Et4293 course in general.

This document will first present general information on how to configure and start Cadence. Subsequently, particular changes, as well as other notes and explanations, are listed below in the context of each manual. Page numbers and line numbers below refer to the particular document, but similar changes would apply to the html version of the manuals.

Sourceme and .cdsinit

You need special versions of the sourceme and .cdisinit files in order to be able to use the Calibre design rule checker. You can download these files here:

sourceme
dot-cdsinit

You should copy these files into your working directory. Please note that the dot-cdsinit file should be renamed into .cdsinit. The . at the beginning makes it an invisible file. (You won't see this file unless you use the -a flag to ls, e.g. ls -a or ls -al.)

Cadence Getting Started

Before you can do anything with Cadence, make sure your shell environment is correct. (The unix/linux shell is the command interpreter, much like cmd in windows.) We assume that you will be using the tcsh or equivalent. Then, there is a convenient sourceme script available to make all the correct settings. At the command prompt, type

$ source /opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41/sourceme

Here, the $ sign is the prompt, the rest you have to type. The command above will set all the correct environment variable for the version of Cadence that we will use. (Note, however, that if you want to run Calibre you need to source the custom version of sourceme that you can download above.

In general, the documentation can be found at

/opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41/sun4v/IC5.1.41/doc

Here you will find directories for each document. Typically, each directory will have a master html file called <toolname>TOC.html. Instead of pasting the above URLs in your browser, you can also open the files with 'File -> Open File', and than navigating to the particular directory. There will typically also be a complete pdf file, <toolname>.pdf to be opened with any pdf reader (acroread is available).

For easy reference, the following provides file:// URL pointers to those Cadence manuals that will be most important to us. If you have a browser that is running on a machine where /opt/cad is mounted (if you can run the Cadence software, this is the case), then you can also copy and paste these URLs in the location field of your browser:

Cell Design Tutorial

The Cadence cell design tutorial can be started as follows:

acroread /opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41/sun4v/IC5.1.41/doc/celltut/celltut.pdf

or by clicking on either of

file:///opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41/sun4v/IC5.1.41/doc/celltut/celltutTOC.html
file:///opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41/sun4v/IC5.1.41/doc/celltut/celltut.pdf

Copying the tutorial database

On page 13, line 7, the instdir command should return the following if your settings are correct:

/u/55/55/cadence/5.1.41/lnx86/IC5.1.41/tools.lnx86/dfII

Please note that /u/55/55 is actually the same location in the file system as /opt/cad, but that latter name should be prefered in your settings since the disk number might change unexpectedly.

Page 13, Line 12:

cd /opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41/lnx86/IC5.1.41/tools.lnx86/dfII/samples/tutorials/le

Starting the Cadence software

Setting the working directory (page 14): first go to your home directory by using the command:

cd ~

Finding the Executable

The location of layoutPlus (page 14):

/opt/cad/cadence/5.1.41/lnx86/IC5.1.41/tools/dfII/bin/layoutPlus

Using the Help Button

Page 28: the help button currently does not work.

Exiting the Cadence Software

Page 29: Please note that xterm is the name of the application for the (virtual) console window as assumed in the Cadence documenation. We will be using another terminal/console application. For our purposes, this is completely equivalent to using xterm.