* New: In Kite, in BuildPowerRails more accurate GCell density computation
under the pad area, to limit the overloaded messages.
* New: In Cumulus, In BlockCorona, remove the vertical METAL3 blockages
and replace them by horizontal blockages completly enclosing the
corona big vias in all layers. This way the I/O wires that goes
through the corona are guided to be straight and do not creates
unsolvable doglegs due to the presence of big vias.
* Change: In Kite & Etesian, small typo: refactor the method
"::wipeOutRouting()" into "::wipeoutRouting()" (indulge me, I'm a
code maniac).
* Bug: In Hurricane, in PyHurricane.h the macro HCATCH was not catching
standard STL exceptions. This was the source of the cryptic message:
"Fatal Python error: Py_EndInterpreter: thread still has a frame"
The Python interpreter was interrupted uncleanly bypassing it's own
exceptions mechanism.
In PyViewer, the Viewer *do not* inherit from a base class (in the
Python export).
* New: In Hurricane, in DbU, compute maximum values (in double) for
grid, lambda & physical (in meter) so now the DbU::toGrid(),
DbU::toLambda() & DbU::toPhysical() methods can check for out of
bound values, and throw an exception.
* Change: In Hurricane, ExceptionWidget::catchAllWrapper() now returns
a boolean, set to <true> if an exception has been catched. Allow
callers to interrupt themselves if a problem has occured.
* Bug: In Kite & Etesian, in the Python wrapper, send a Python exception
if catchAllwrapper() did return true, instead of continuing...
* Change: In Kite & Etesian, adds a setViewer() method (exported in Python)
to use the graphical ExceptionWidget when in graphic mode.
* Bug: In Cumulus, in PadsCorona.py the check for the core vs. chip size
was not returning False when invalid.
* New: In CRL Core, in Vst driver, add a support IEEE VHDL. Inactive for
now as I don't see clearly the policy for selecting it or not.
Remove the code of the old Vst driver.
In Blif parser, check for non-existent models (incomplete or
corrupted Blif file). Found by G. Gouvine.
* New: Added extras file for IDE-like support under Emacs.
* Bug: In Hurricane, in NetAlias, bad Record construction of the _next
field.
* New: In CRL Core, in VstDriver complete replacement of the old Vst
driver. Needed cleaner architecture to manage correctly files
importeds through the Blif parser, which are Verilog like.
It is build as an extension trough property and is not kept
in sync with the Cell. So it's use should be transient only.
* Change: In CRL Core, in NamingScheme forgot to change '.' (dot)
forbidden character into '_'.
* Change: In Cumulus, in the RSave plugins, remove the VHDL extensions
after saving.
* New: In Hurricane, In Cell, add Placed and Routed flags to know the
state of the Cell.
* Change: In CRL Core, In ApDriver, do not save the RoutingPads as
external connectors if the design is *not* routed (create
conflics on reload with the newly generated RoutingPads).
* Change: In Etesian, set the Placed flag on the Cell.
* Change: In Kite, set the Routed flag on the Cell.
* Change: In Cumulus, in RSavePluginAll, save the layout only if it
has a bounding box.
* New: In Hurricane, In Net & Cell, support for Net aliases names.
Use a structure based on a simple ring of NetAliasHook. The Net
holds a global map, sorted by names of all the aliases of all Nets.
Elements NetAliasesHook of the map are slaves of ring whose master
is an attribute of the Net (it is *not* in the map, as the primary
name of the Net).
In case of merge, the aliases of both Nets are merged and the
name of the merged one become an alias.
The Cell::getNet() looks in both the Net map and the aliases to
find a Net by name.
* Bug: In CRL Core, in coriolisInit.py, reoder the loading of the
configuration files so the real technology is read as early as
possible to set up the <gridsPerLambda> factor before any lambda
is actually computed...
* Bug: In CRL Core, in AcmSigda, do not try to fed the file when it
has failed to be opened. Throw a clean exception instead.
* New: In CRL Core, in Toolbox, add a NamingScheme object to convert
a design into VHDL compliant names (mainly from Blif/Verilog).
This is extensible in any case.
* New: In CRL Core, in BlifParser, slightly more informative warning
messages. Align the loading progress information on the other
parsers.
Add a capability to select which component of the design will
be returned, if there are more than one. Use the "." as separator.
For exemple you can request "Processor.Alu", which will load
the "Alu" component from the design in "Processor.blif".
To be able to save a Blif loaded design, systematically convert
all the name for VHDL compliance, as it is the format used by
the Coriolis native files (vst).
Export the Blif parser to the Python interface.
* New: In Kite, In NegociateWindow, add a counter of the number of
remaining events. Gives an idea of the ETA...
* New: In Unicorn, in cgt.by, add an option to load a Blif design from
the command line.
* New: In Cumulus, new RSave plugin to save both netlist & layout.
Partly redundant with the previous one. Have to better organize
that later.
* Change: In Cumulus, in Configuration.py, in the horizontal & vertical
wire creation adds new flags ExpandWidth to draw wires one lambda
bigger than the minimal width (see ClockTree.py patch).
* Change: In Cumulus, In ClockTree.py, use non default width to draw
wires of the H branch of the clock tree. This is to prevent them
to be recognized as "manual global routing", which they are not
and not event topologically compatible.
* Bug: In Kite, in BuildPowerRails, change the way clocks are detected
when working on a single block (not a whole chip). Now look only
in clock which are external and do not filter out already routed
ones.
* Change: In KiteEngine, in createGlobalGraph(), systematically call
flattenNets() so nets that are added after the first flattening
in the placer are also flattened. The flattenNets() Cell method
takes care of not flattening twice a net.
* Change: In Bootstrap & ccb, the coloquinte project is renamed into
"importeds", it will be the home of all the externally
devellopped softwares that are needed to build Coriolis.
Add explicit support for Fedora ("Linux.fc") and uses
site-packages, as everybody else.
* New: In CRL Core, in etc/, adds the configuration files for Etesian.
* New: In Etesian, activate the Configuration object. Now uses it's
own configuration variables instead of borrowing those of
Nimbus & Mauka.
* Change: In Documentation, updated User's Guide to present Etesian
as the placer, instead of Mauka.
* Change: In Cumulus, slight change in ClokTreePlugin and ChipPlugin
to match the new Etesian/Python interface.
* New: In Hurricane, in DebugSession, add a new method to activate the
trace inconditionally with a certain level.
* New: In Hurricane, in HyperNet, allow copy construction as there is
no reason to disallow it and we need it now.
* New: In Hurricane, in Cell::flattenNets(), add a new option to prevent
the flattening of the clock net(s). For more safety perform the
DeepNet creation *outside* the Collection loop.
* Bug: In Hurricane, in Cell_HyperNetRootNetOccurrences, skip the
DeepNets because they are the result of another flattening operation.
* New: In Isobar, in PyBasicLayer, export C++ method getBlockageLayer().
* New: In Isobar, in PyRoutingGauge, export C++ method getLayerPitch(),
needed by Cumulus plugins.
* New: In Etesian, EtesianEngine::findYSpin() to look for the Y orientation
if some cells are already placed. Typically the buffers of a clock
tree.
Pass the correct orienation to row_compatible_orientation().
Do not try to add feeds in the ISPD05 benchmarks. For now the
benchmarks are detected through their names (unreliable).
* Change: In Knik, in KnikEngine::initGlobalRouting(), allow the clock
to be routed as an ordinary signal when the clock tree is not
used.
* New: In Kite, in BuildPowerRails, management & detection for the
pre-routed clock.
In KiteEngine constructor, early initialization of the blockage
net to avoid later troubles in BuildPowerRails.
* New: In Cumulus, in ChipPlugin, add support for Etesian plus new
configuration parameter 'clockTree.placerEngine' to select between
Mauka and Etesian.
* New: In Cumulus, in BlockCorona, add blockages in the vertical sides
in the vertical layer to prevent the router to use the vertical
tracks in under the prower lines (for example, blockage in M3
with power line M5).
In Cumulus, in ChipConf add attribute to access the blockage net.
* New: In Cumulus, when the clock tree is disabled, do not generate
the last rail around the block (the clock rail).
* Bug: In Cumulus, in ChipConf use the clock pad to guess the clock
signals and *not* the power pad.
Add more meaningful error messages if a pad global signal is
not found (implicit connexion by name).
* Bug: In Cumulus, in ClockTree, compute correctly the cells Y spin,
that is *from the bottom of the cell AB* (not from 'zero').
* Bug: In Bootstrap, in coriolisEnv.py, check if devtoolset-2 is already
active before launching it as a sub-shell.
* Bug: In Isobar, In PyHurricane.h, DBoDestroyAttribute() set the proxy
pointer toward the C++ object to NULL. So when the Python object is
deleted no double-deletion occurs on the C++ object.
Add some more trace information in Python link/dealloc.
* Change: In CRL Core, in cyclop, make CMakeLists.txt automatically
choose the right rule for linking the binary wether we use Qt 4 or
Qt 5. Very irksome problem.
* New: In EtesianEngine::addFeed(), do not take into account instances
that are not placed entirely inside the top cell abutment box (was
causing a core dump).
* Bug: In Katabatic, in GCellQueue, correct a mismatch between a GCell
set and the iterators used upon it.
* Bug: In Mauka, in Row & Surface correct a mismatch between a container
and it's iterator.
* New: In Etesian, updated to work with the latest Coloquinte, patch
contributed by G. Gouvine.
Added EtesianEngine::setDefaultAb() to compute an abutment box if
the Cell is completly unplaced.
* New: In cumulus, in ClockTree, now the placer can be configured to be
either Mauka (slow simulated annealing) or Etesian (fast analytic).
New setting 'clockTree.placerEngine' in plugin settings.
* New: In Bootstrap, in Builder & coriolisEnv.py support for RHEL7/SL7.
The sub-directory name is 'el7_64'.
In qt_setup() add QtSvg to list of Qt5 & Qt4 used libraries.
* New: In Hurricane, In Cell add a placeholder for flags. First use to
store whether the Nets have been transhierarchically flatteneds.
* New: In Hurricane, In NetRoutingState add an Unconnected flag for
more accurate diagnosis.
* New: Hurricane, in CellViewer add an entry menu for stress tests.
The script must be named "stressScript.py" in the cwd.
* Change: In CRL Core, in display.conf add a scaling parameter for the
display threhold of the layer. This way we can adapt to different
standard cells height.
* Change: In CRL Core, in ISPD05 bookshelf loader, use the pitch of the
cell gauge instead of a hard-wired 5.0.
* Change: In Cumulus, in ClockTreePlugin, add support for Etesian placer
and a new configuration parameter to choose between Mauka/Etesian.
* New: In Etesian, support for the latest Coloquinte.
Add feed insertion stage.
* Bug: In Kite, In BuildPowerRails, check that _ck is not NULL before
tring to access it's name...
* Change: In Kite, check if the Cell has it's Nets flattened before
doing it (or not).
* Bug: In Cumulus, in ClockTree.py, do not use "tie_x0" which is 2 pitch
wide to fill the free space left by clock-tree removed (unused)
buffers. If the buffer size width is odd (in pitch), it will left
a gap in the WELL. That was the cause of DRC notch errors.
Instead use "rowend_x0" which is one pitch wide.
Should use the same mechanism as in Mauka InsertFeed.
* Change: In Hurricane, the NetRoutingProperty is moved into Hurricane
from Katabatic. Needed for Knik to be able to access thoses
informations.
* Change: In Hurricane, in RoutingPad::setOnBestComponent(), now in
case of identical area, select the component of lowest id.
This should not be needed if the component ordering was fully
deterministic as it should be (will investigate later).
This is to ensure that the choosen component is always the
same, especially between save/load of a global routing.
* Bug: In Katabatic, in AutoContactHTee::updateTopology(), invalidate
the segments only if the topology is valid (no NULL in the
cached segments).
* Bug: In Katabatic, in GCellTopology::construct(), throw an error
if the topology is bad instead of trying to continue (and core
dump later... ).
* Bug: In Kite, in BuildPowerRails, distinguish the name of the master
net in the pad (for vddi, vssi, vdde, vsse, ck, cki & cko) and the
name of the net in the *chip* netlist. Must use the later to make
comparison as they may differs.
* Change: In Knik, in save/load solution, exclude nets that are not
globally routed by Knik. That is which NetRoutingProperty is not
*Automatic*.
* Bug: In Cumulus, in chip.BlockPower take account of the layer
width extention to sligthy shrink the connector thus avoiding a
notch with standart cell in some cases.
* Change: In Cumulus, in chip.ClockTree disable the use of fixed Steiner
trees for the leaf clocks, as it seems overconstrained for the
router. First move was to lower them in M2/M3 (instead of M3/M4)
but that was not sufficent.
* New: In Cumulus, RSavePlugin for recursively saving a physical
hierarchy.
* New: In documentation, first embryo for RDS file. Should have been
in Alliance git, but I prefer to keep newest doc in Coriolis.
* New: In CRL Core, in helpers & alliance.conf, set and read a "PAD"
variable to define the pad model name extension ("px" for "sxlib
and "pxr" for vsxlib, this is provisional).
* New: In CRL Core, in plugin.conf, add parameters to define the name
of used for power & clock supply. We may remove the extention in
the future (to be more coherent with the previous modification).
* New: In Cumulus, in chip.Configuration.GaugeConf._rpAccess(), no
longer place the accessing contact *at the center* of the
RoutingPad. It works under sxlib because buffers & registers all
have same size terminals. But this is not true under vsxlib,
leading to misaligned contacts & wires. Now systematically place
on the slice midlle track (maybe with one pitch above or below).
This is still very weak as we do not check if the terminal
reach were the contact is being put. Has to be strenthened in
the future.
* New: In Cumulus, in chip.Configuration.ChipConf, read the new
clock & power pad parameters.
* Change: In Isobar (and all other Python wrappers), uses PyLong instead
of PyInt for DbU conversions. In PyHurricane argument converter,
automatically check for both PyLong and then PyInt.
* Change: In Cumulus, in chip.PadsCorona, more accurate error message
in case of discrepency in global net connections (i.e. no net
of the same name in instance model and instance model owner.
* Change: In Kite, in BuildPowerRails, when looking up at the pads
model name to find "pck_" or "pvddeck_", do not compare the
extension part. But we still use hard-coded stem pad names,
maybe we shouldn't.
* Bug: In Katabatic, in GCellConfiguration::_do_xG_xM1_xM3(), there
was a loop in the search of the best N/E initial RoutingPad.
* Bug: In Kite, in KiteEngine::protectRoutingPads(), *do not* protect
RoutingPads of fixed nets, they are already through the
BuildPowerRails stage (and it's causing scary overlap warning
messages).
* Bug: In Cumulus, in ClockTree.HTreeNode.addLeaf(), do not create
deep-plug when the core is flat (not sub-modules). All the new
nets are at core level.
* Bug: In Cumulus, in ChipPlugin.PlaceCore.doFloorplan(), ensure
that the core is aligned on the GCell grid (i.e. the slice
grid of the overall chip).
* Bug: In Kite, in GCellTopology::_do_xG_xM1_xM3(), infinite loop
while looking for the bigger N-E RoutingPad. Forgot to decrement
the index...
* Bug: In ClockTree plugin, only the logical view of the clock buffer
was loaded, so no external components where found on the I/O nets.
The external components are loaded only when the *physical* view
is loaded. Didn't show on sxlib because the buffer was fulled
loaded *before* running the ClockTree.
* Bug: In PyHurricane, in the various LocatorNextMethod() macros,
sometimes an empty collection can be returned by Hurricane
(GenericCollection()), which has a NULL locator. So check
if the locator is *not* NULL before trying to access it...
* Change: In Chip, more accurate error messages related to the clock
detecttion.
* New: In ClockTree plugin, select the name of the buffer cell through
configuration (parameter: "clockTree.buffer"), and guess the I/O
name of this buffer automatically.
Put configuration parameters in plugin.conf and not mauka.conf.
Bug: strangely triggers a coredump in components collection
when used with <vsxlib>. Some debug printing still active until
that is solved.
* New: In Chip plugin, make the size and numbers of the block rails
configuration parameters (in plugin.conf).
* Change: In Hurricane, in Plug::setNet(), more informative error messages.
* Change: In Hurricane, In Segment, more informative error messages.
* Change: In Hurricane, In DeepNet, accessor for the Net occurrence.
* Bug: In Katabatic, in AutoSegment::create(), error message uses correct
variables (vertical was using horizontal)...
* Change: In Kite, in BuildPowerRails, already existing wiring in instances
is copied up as blockage. Uses blockage layer instead of true layer
(it was a bug).
* Change: In Kite, in BuildPreRouted, consider as manual global routing
nets with only default wiring (default size wire & contacts).
Non-default routing is flagged as fixed (with the NetRoutingState
property).
* New: In Cumulus, first versions of the ClockTree and Chip plugins.
Clock Tree plugin:
- It is strongly advised to use have 4 metal routing layers for the
tree to work. Otherwise, problems can arise with the detailed
routing (fully obstructed terminals).
- H-Tree can only be build (for now) for design with a form factor
between 0.5 an 2.
- The tree is created at the block top-level and only the leafs are
trans-hierarchically created on the instances/models. The new
cell with a clock tree, along with all it's sub-models is created
with a "_clocked" suffix.
- Leaf cells are connected through a simple Minimum Steiner Tree.
- Shorts are avoided by a systematic shift of the wires according
to their kind. No wire must pre-exist. When used as a sub-module
of "chip" the wires cannot be moved. When created on a block,
the wires can be loaded in the detailed router as manual global
router.
Chip Plugin:
- Perform the pad placement and corona creation. Replacement at
last of the clunky code from Wu Yifei.
- Relies on a Python configuration file '<design>_chip.py' with
a "chip" dictionnary.
Finally get rid of the demonic code from Wu Yifei...
* New: In Isobar, added encapsulation of Interval (don't know how have
forgotten it for so long).
* Change: In Isobar, In PyLayer, new PyLink_LayerDerived() function to
create/link the C++ object to the correct derived class and not the
base one (PyLayer) which then prevent to use the specialized methods.
Must replace PyLink_Layer() througout all the code.
* Change: In Isobar, in PyPoint the "setX()" & "setY()" methods where
still capitalized.
* Change: In Isobar, in PyQuery, complete the exportation of the C++
interface. remove the code belonging to a more "boost" way of
building the Python interface (will do that in a far future).
* New: In CRL Core, In PyAllianceFramework, export isPad() method.
* Change: In Unicorn, in unicornInit.py, protect the loading of each
single plugin by a "try" / "except" clause to the failing of one
plugins do not stop the loading of the next one.
Pass the same dictionnary argument to unicornHook() as for
ScripMain(), this is more uniform this way.
* New: In Cumulus, complete replacement of the chip placement scripts
from Wu Yifei (at last!). The clock-tree integration is still to
be done.
________________________________________________________________________
* New: In all to CMakeLists.txt, disable the warning about deprecated
WIN32 under cygwin.
* New: In boostrap, in ccb.py, coriolisEnv.py and builder/Configuration.py
add recognition in uname for the values returned under Windows/Cygwin.
* New: In Documenation, in UsersGuide.rst add some informations about
Cygwin and a section for the devel branch.
Jean-Paul Chaput