Cadence Virtuoso Setup Guide

Author: Faisal T. Abu-Nimeh Last update: August 21, 2009

Abstract This document provides step-by-step instructions for MSU engineering students to setup and run Cadence Virtuoso Custom IC 6.1.x. This tutorial is intended for ECE students enrolled in ECE410, ECE412, ECE813, or ECE832, however, anyone in engineering can follow it to achieve the same goal.

Contents
1 Quick Setup 2 Introduction 3 Prerequisites 4 Connecting to a Server 4.1 MS Windows . . . . . 4.2 Mac OS X . . . . . . . 4.3 Unix Variants . . . . . 4.4 Successful Connection 1 1 2 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 6

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5 File System 5.1 ECE Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Other Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Running Virtuoso 7 Troubleshooting

Quick Setup
1. Connect to any EGR server [refer to section 4]. 2. Change to the directory where you want/have your Cadence Virtuoso les [refer to section 5] e.g. type cd /egr/courses/personal/COURSENAME /USERNAME 3. Launch Virtuoso by typing source $SOFT/cadence-auto virtuoso [refer to section 6]

The steps below should be executed in order:

Introduction

Cadence Virtuoso is a software suite targeting custom IC designers. It provides schematic capture, layout editor, various circuit simulators, and many other features for analog and mixed signal designs. 1

Prerequisites
Active EGR account. Sucient disk space. A workstation running MS Windows with Putty and Xming installed. Mac OS X and Unix variants should already have X11 and ssh, so users will not need to install extra software. A server running GNU/Linux from DECS. ATTOW, you can use sati, byron, brock, rusty, etc.

Connecting to a Server

Everytime you want to use Cadence Virtuoso you have to connect to one of the DECS servers. ECE students should use the designated lab assigned to their course or any of the public Windows EGR labs in EB then follow the instructions in subsection 4.1.

4.1

MS Windows

The EGR labs already have the required software installed. ECE students should rst run Xming then Putty as shown in gure 1. After running Xming you should see Xmings icon in the tray beside the clock.

Figure 1: Starting Xming then Putty in MS Windows XP Using Putty you can connect to a server by typing the name in the Host Name text box as highlighted in gure 2. In this guide we chose to use rusty.

Figure 2: Connecting to rusty Before openning a connection to the server you have to make sure that X11 forwarding is enabled in Putty. So, on the left side menu go to Connection SSH X11 and make sure that Enable X11 forwarding is checked, as seen in gure 3. Once you verify these settings you can connect to rusty by clicking on Open. Also, you can save these settings for the future by going back to Session menu and typing the name of the session then clicking on Save.

Figure 3: Enable X11 Forwarding

4.2

Mac OS X

If you are using Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or above you should have X11 pre-installed on your Mac. To connect to a server: Go to Finder Applications Utilities then run Terminal and type the following command ssh -X USERNAME @rusty where USERNAME is your engineering username and rusty is the server you want to connect to.

4.3

Unix Variants

Users running Unix variants like GNU/Linux Fedora, Ubuntu, or FreeBSD can connect to any of the servers using their favorite console application then running ssh -X USERNAME @rusty where USERNAME is your engineering username and rusty is the server you want to connect to.

4.4

Successful Connection

A successful connection is established when you see the command prompt as shown in gure 4

(a) Windows successful connection(b) Mac OS X successful connection (c) Fedora successful connection

Figure 4: Command prompt for several operating systems

File System

Before running Virtuoso you have to make sure that you have enough disk space as well as the correct le system setup. The directory where you start Virtuoso will contain all library les, startup les, editor environment and settings, simulation data, etc. Therefore, you have to run Virtuoso in the same directory each time you want to use it.

5.1

ECE Students

ECE students enrolled in ECE410, ECE412, etc should use this directory to start Virtuoso /egr/courses/personal/COURSENAME /USERNAME / . For example, if your username is asd1815 and you are enrolled in ECE412 then before you start Cadence Virtuoso you have to change to the correct directory in the le system by typing cd /egr/courses/personal/ece412/asd1815/ . Note that once the course ends these les will be 4

deleted. So, if you are going to use them beyond the course make sure that you have a copy/backup before the end of the semester.

5.2

Other Students

Other students who have an EGR account can use their Home Directory, however, it is highly recommended that you dont run long simulations that can use up all your quota. If you need to run such simulations then use the scratch directory e.g. /egr/scratch/USERNAME . Note that EGR periodically deletes any le in scratch older than 3 days.

Running Virtuoso

Once you have decided which directory you want to run Virtuoso in and store all related les as described in section 5, you can load the Cadence environment, NCSU CDK libraries, and start Virtuoso simply typing: source $SOFT/cadence-auto virtuoso this command will copy the required environment les, simulator model paths, and cds.lib then it will launch Virtuoso. if you just want to load the environment without launching Virtuoso just type source $SOFT/cadence-auto . For EGR students who dont want to load/copy any extra les or want to load their own CDK/PDK type source $SOFT/cadence then run Virtuoso as usual by typing virtuoso & . After running Virtuoso you should see two screens. A CIW screen as shown in gure 5 and the Library Manager as depicted in gure 6. Please verify that you have NCSU Analog parts and NCSU TechLib ami06 otherwise your setup was not successful.

Figure 5: Virutoso CIW Window

Figure 6: Virtuoso Library Manager

Troubleshooting
I get an error bash: setenv: command not found when I source the environment le. Make sure that you are running tcsh shell not bash, so just type tcsh before sourcing or contact support to change your shell perminantly. I accidently deleted my .cshrc le! What should I do? To update/restore your dotles type /opt/bin/newdots When I run Virtuoso it fails with this error: WARNING* X Window Display Initialization failure WARNING* (DISPLAY not dened) If you are running on Windows make sure you that Xming is running and preferably run it before Putty. If you are running on a Mac or Unix then verify that you pass -X when running ssh e.g. ssh -X