🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug7.225414.700@hpcvca.cv.hp.com> you write:
>This is a review of the Undertow graphical waveform viewer software. Undertow
>is a product that Veritools sells. I have no connection with this company,
>nor does my employer. I've written a non-graphical version of a similar
>tool, and though others may find this information of interest. 
 
I too am an undertow user, and I find this to be a very useful tool indeed.
I am currently doing system simulation, which is composed of several ASICs
and the usual glue.  The simulation has 200K+ nets, and I'd like to see
the $gr_waves statement for displaying all those nets :-).

>Undertow processes the Value Change Dump file that verilog can create. It
>displays user-selected signals as waveforms in an xwindow.
>Choose did not give any indication of which signals were already choosen. 
>Also, once selected, a signal could not be deleted from the display.
 
Choosen items are displayed in the shell window from which undertow was
invoked.  I find it useful to have the bottom part of the shell window
to be visible under the ut display, so I can see my signal selections.
Signals can be deleted by selecting the signal(s) and hitting cut twice.
If you press cut only once the signals move to the bottom of the display.

>Regarding the display, I was impressed with the speed at which you could pan
>across and up/down. The display lacks a timescal, though, which would
>be nice. Also, the numerical display of bus values (hex, bin) leaves 
>something to be desired. First, I'd like to see a decimal display
>format. Also, the hex and binary formats should pad MSBs with zeros. This
>was indeed confusing, even though I knew that's what it was doing. Also,
>(I've spoken with some of you about this one before) I'd like to have
>a way to display text in place of the numbers. This can be useful when
>the bus value represents a state in a state machine, ar maybe an op-code or
>some other named value. 
 
Bob Schopmeyer, the founder of Veritools, has told me that his next release
is coming in two-three weeks.  The new release will include some new features
to deal with customizing the display format.  Bob can be reached at
415 941-6870.  While his product is not perfect by any means, I couldn't even
think of using $gr_waves for debugging my simulation.  Nothing like waiting a
few hours for your simulation to finish, and then find that a signal has gone
to red (X), and the inputs to the module (gate or whatever) are not itemized
in the $gr_waves list.  Nothing like re-running a simulation to see something
that should of been available to look at in the first place.  Cadence really
missed the boat when it came to graphical display of output.

>
>I did not check to see how much memory this program uses. This should be
>looked at, but I know I was having no noticable impact on an HP 9000/720 with
>48(?)MB.
 

This was not a problem, however my verilog.dump file is 125MB, and that is
of concern to my sys admin.  It doesn't take too many .dump files to fill up
an entire disk.

All in all a big thumbs up for Undertow.

draut@oliveb