* New: Python/C++ API level:
* Write a new C++/template wrapper to get rid of boost::python
* The int & long Python type are now merged. So a C/C++ level,
it became "PyLong_X" (remove "PyInt_X") and at Python code
level, it became "int" (remove "long").
* Change: VLSISAPD finally defunct.
* Configuration is now integrated as a Hurricane component,
makes use of the new C++/template wrapper.
* vlsisapd is now defunct. Keep it in the source for now as
some remaining non essential code may have to be ported in
the future.
* Note: Python code (copy of the migration howto):
* New print function syntax print().
* Changed "dict.has_key(k)" for "k" in dict.
* Changed "except Exception, e" for "except Exception as e".
* The division "/" is now the floating point division, even if
both operand are integers. So 3/2 now gives 1.5 and no longer 1.
The integer division is now "//" : 1 = 3//2. So have to carefully
review the code to update. Most of the time we want to use "//".
We must never change to float for long that, in fact, represents
DbU (exposed as Python int type).
* execfile() must be replaced by exec(open("file").read()).
* iter().__next__() becomes iter(x).__next__().
* __getslice__() has been removed, integrated to __getitem__().
* The formating used for str(type(o)) has changed, so In Stratus,
have to update them ("<class 'MyClass'>" instead of "MyClass").
* the "types" module no longer supply values for default types
like str (types.StringType) or list (types.StringType).
Must use "isinstance()" where they were occuring.
* Remove the 'L' to indicate "long integer" (like "12L"), now
all Python integer are long.
* Change in bootstrap:
* Ported Coriolis builder (ccb) to Python3.
* Ported Coriolis socInstaller.py to Python3.
* Note: In PyQt4+Python3, QVariant no longer exists. Use None or
directly convert using the python syntax: bool(x), int(x), ...
By default, it is a string (str).
* Note: PyQt4 bindings & Python3 under SL7.
* In order to compile user's must upgrade to my own rebuild of
PyQt 4 & 5 bindings 4.19.21-1.el7.soc.
* Bug: In cumulus/plugins.block.htree.HTree.splitNet(), set the root
buffer of the H-Tree to the original signal (mainly: top clock).
Strangely, it was only done when working in full chip mode.
* Change: In documentation, now generate the overall documentation using
Pelican instead of Sphinx. This allows to have an unified approach
between the coriolis.lip6.fr website and the local documentation.
So we keep using "only" two doc generators: doxygen & Pelican.
* Change: In boostrap, remove support for Chams.
* New: In Hurricane::Technology, added support for DTR rules, UnitRule,
PhysicalRule and TwoLayersPhysicalrule. Added devices descriptors and
models descriptors (for Spice). Spice description is not used yet
but kept anyway in case of future use.
* New: Hurricane::Analog whole library and it's Python interface. This
provides support for transistors, capacitors and resistors. Only
transistor support is fully implemented as of now.
* New: In CRL/python/coriolisInit.py, read configuration files for the
Analog extension (analog.conf & devices.conf). Thoses are optionals
and a simple warning is issued if not found.
Added helpers/AnalogTechno.py DTR loading helper.
Add analog configuration files for 180/scn6m_deep_09.
* New: Oroshi tool that provides actual layout drawing for transistors.
* New: In Hurricane::Isobar::PyPolygon, export the getSubPolygons()
method. Makes a list of list (maybe tuple should have been better
to prevent user's rewrite).
* Change: In documentation/examples/scripts/, update polygons.py to
serve as a very basic test-bench for Polygon, manhattanhization
and sub-polygons display.
* New: In CRL, implement a GDSII parser. The complete syntax is supported,
but only a few subset is really taken into account. It is intended to
load the layout of standard cells only. The interface of the cell is
provided through a LEF file and it complete layout through the GDSII.
The loader work in a Library way. It takes a Hurricane library as
argument and search in the GDSII library structures with a name
matching the Cell of the library and complete them.
* Change: In Hurricane::Component, put the Contour methods at Component
level so we can use them in a generic way in the CellWidget drawing
primitives.
* New: Hurricane::Rectilinear polygon, for small rectlinear polygons.
Should be less than 100 vertexes. For bigger ones, use Polygon
which allows slanted egdes.
* Bug: In CRL, freepdk_45/technology.conf, there seems to be an incoherency
bettween the GDSII layer numbers as defined in the Cadence FreeePDK45.tf
file and the one used in the supplied layout of the GDSII cells.
For now, we align on the GDSII cells to get nice layouts, but it
has to checked.
* New: In Hurricane::Diagonal, new object to represent 45° and 135°
segments (X routing). Althought they have source & target, they
are not articulated like Horizontal & Vertical, due to the
combined displacement of X and Y (diagonal).
Maybe we should create a common class for all the polygons
to make "::getContour()" a method.
Now we could represent self capacitances and high frequency
wires.
* New: Hurricane::Triange as been renamed into Hurricane::Polygon.
Add support for convex polygons. Polygon are approximateds by
excess by a manhattan rectilinear polygon (with potentially
thousands of vertexes). To reduce the memory footprint,
compaction techniques reducing by at least a factor 4 has been
implemented. We could go further by only storing the non-repetitive
part of the edge (defined by the integral fraction dY/dY).
We will see, if the program slows too much.
The manhattan approximate is always computed but displayed
only if the polygon grid step is greated than 4 pixels.
The level of approximation of the polygons can be controlled
through the "DbU::_polygonStep" parameter.
* Change: In CRL/coriolisInit.py and CRL/helpers/Technology.py, regroup
all DbU related parameters into "technoConfig" (i.e. suppress
"viewerConfig"). Update all the relevant technology.conf configuration
files.
Change the loader behavior so that "technoConfig" is read first
and is now responsible for creating the Technology of the DataBase.
* New: In Hurricane::CellWidget, added support for displaying mahanttanized
polygons.
* Change: In documenation/scripts/expample/polygons.py, perform (I hope)
a comprehensive test of the polygons (check all slopes, clockwise and
conter-clockwise).
* New: In Hurricane::DbU, added template to manage vector<> of DbU.
Support for the "polygonStep" parameter.
* New: In Hurricane::Entity, add an id counter limit and a memory size
limit. The two limits are checked only when a new Entity object is
created. This should help avoiding massive memory links.
* New: In CRL Core, add a "crlcore.groundName" and a "crlcore.powerName"
parameter to specify the name of the ground/power signals to be
created if they are missing in a Cell. For Alliance libraries it
would be "vss" & "vdd" (default values), but for real technologies,
it is often "gnd!" & "vdd!".
The Blif parser is modificated to make use of it.
* Bug: In AnabaticEngine::unify(), set the resulting unified segment in
the center of the GCells common side. Gcells under a segment are
found by using the edge that cover the segment axis. When we have
a "bend" GCell stack and the axis is wrong, they could be ommited.
This was causing deleted segments to be not removed from some
Edges, then core dump.
* Change: In Anabatic::AutoSegment::create(), smarter choosing of the
reference contact, select the fixed or terminal one instead of
always the source one.
* New: In Anabatic::Edge::isEnding(), new function to check if a
segment going through an Edge is starting/ending in either source
or target GCell of the edge (active only when running in channel
mode).
* New: In Anabatic::Edge::add(), a segment takes part in the occupancy
only if it is not ending in either source or target (channel mode
only). The occupancy due to terminal is pre-computed in Katana.
* New: In Anabatic::Edge::ripup(), in channel mode, never ripup a
segment which is ending in either source or target (we *have* to
access this edge to connect to the terminal).
* Bug: In Anabatic::GCell::hcut() and vcut(), force the update of
the Edge which is on the side that will get splitted by the cut.
It's capacity will be reduced to it must be updated.
* Change: In Anabatic::GCell::updateGContacts() add a flag to conditionnally
update horizontals or verticals only. We may require only a partial
update when resizing the GCell in only one direction.
This, again, related to the fact that we compute the GCells under
a segment thanks to it's axis position, so we need to be very careful
when modificating axis.
* Change: In Katana::Block::resizeChannels(), only update GContact vertical
position. Do not disturb X positions of segments.
* Bug: In Katana::GlobalRoute::DigitalDistance, in channel mode, some
Edges can have a zero capacity, but still be reachable if the net has
a terminal in either source or target. Look for this case and return
a distance of zero instead of "unreachable". This was causing the
global routing not to complete in channel mode.
For computing the edge distance, makes the vertical edges much more
long (10 times) than the horizontal ones as the vertical capacity is
very limited. Hard coded for now, should make it a parameter in the
future.
* Change: In KatanaEngine::annotateGlobalGraph(), decrease the capacity
of edges with reserveCapacity for each terminal inside a GCell.
Both north and south edges are decreased as we a terminal will
block both north and south edges.
As a counterpart, the Edge capacity is not decreased when the
global router connect to a terminal.
* Change: In Katana::RoutingEvent::revalidate(), when in repair stage,
do not expand the slack for horizontal segments in channel mode.
So they may not overlap the standard cell row.
* Bug: In Stratus documentation, do not use the french option in babel,
the documentation is in english!
* New: In Documentation, added Hurricane/Python tutorial, part for drawing
layout.
* New: In documentation, reorganise all the various documents into one
Sphinx coherent one. The index also provide a link toward the
Doxygen generated doc (C++ APIs) and the venerable LaTeX2HTML ones
(for Stratus).
This will make easier all future extensions to the doc corpus.
The generated documentation is commited into Git so a new user
can use it directly after cloning the repository.
The HTML doc is truly generated by Sphinx, but the pdf one is
created rst2latex. The Sphinx pdf writer is buggy when a "tabular"
contain a multicol and a multirow in the same area of the table.
rst2latex handles it correctly.
We use a theme borrowed for Read The Doc (half of it).
It seems that some Javascripts are not working correctly,
namely the folding of the navigation sub-menus and the index
generation and search mode.
* Change: In all top CMakeLists.txt, force the use of Python 2.7 as
we do not compile against 3.x flavors. Do not use the "EXACT"
flags as it will not recognize 2.7.x versions.
* Change: In Katana::RoutingEvent::Key::Compare(), preliminary
experiments shows that the best sorting order is:
- Lower layer first (i.e. M2 -> M3 -> M4 -> ... )
- Longer segments first.
The later seems to be counter-intuitive. Guess is that placing
the small ones first generate a more important fragmentation of
the big ones. They are placed too early and are difficult to move
afterwards.
Another feature to test is *not* inserting pushed left/right
segments if they are not *already* routed.
* Change: In PyKatanaEngine.runNegociate() now takes a flag argument,
provided through the new PyKatanaFlags exported object.
(doChip.py must be changed accordingly)
* Change: In Isobar, the Python interface was not exactly mirroring the
C++ one, now it is the case. The Python code should look likes almost
exactly like the C++ one, the only differences remaining being due
to the languages respective syntaxes. Note that in the case of
constructor functions, it leads to a slightly longer notation in
Python that it could have been (mimic the ".create()" static
member). Main modifications:
1. Mirror the static constructor syntax with create():
Cell( ... ) ==> Cell.create( ... )
2. Correct hierarchy for constants in Instance, Net, Pin
& Transformation. For example:
Hurricane.PlacementStatusFIXED
==> Hurricane.Instance.PlacementStatus.FIXED
Hurricane.OrientationID
==> Hurricane.Transformation.Orientation.ID
Hurricane.TypeLOGICAL ==> Hurricane.Net.Type.LOGICAL
Hurricane.DirectionIN ==> Hurricane.Net.Direction.IN
* Change: In CRL Core, correction to match the improved Python API
in the configutation helpers.
* Change: In Cumulus, correction to match the improved Python API.
* Change: In Stratus, correction to match the improved Python API.
* Change: In Documenation, update for the new Python interface
(both user's guide & examples).
* Note: We must port those changes into Chams for it to continue
to run.
* Change: In Documenation, update the Python script support part.
Update to Qt 5:
* Change: Now requires at least cmake 2.8.9.
* Change: CMakeLists.txt needs small changes. Qt modules must be found
one by one (Core, Gui, Widgets). Must add "set(CMAKE_AUTOMOC ON)"
in the top file and replace "qt4" prefix in macros by "qt5".
Added simpler macro "setup_qt()" in FindBootstrap.cmake.
* Change: No longer need to include <QGtkStyle> is is choosen by default
according to the current desktop environment.
* Change: In <hurricane>, In HApplication, launch ExceptionWidget when
a std::exception is catched instead of silently discarting it.
New placer Tool: Etesian
* New: <etesian> analytical placer. Encapsulate Coloquinte from
Gabriel Gouvine.
* New: in <documentation>, add stub demonstration ToolEngine <smurf>.
Needs to be commented.
Miscellaneous:
* New: in <boostrap> and <unicorn>, added support for Etesian, the new
analytic placer. The tool itself will be added in the next commit.
* Bug: in <CellWidget>, when shifting the display buffer, we no longer
can copy the buffer on itself (we should never have). Now go through
a temporary one (PlaneId::AutoCopy) which is added to the
DrawingPlanes. Affect "goLeft()" and "goUp()".
* Bug: In <CellWidget>, remove the WA_PaintOnScreen flag/attribute.
When it's on, no PaintEvent is transmitted to the CellWidget
when it's the central widget of the <CellViewer> (QMainWindow).
It's something I still don't understand from the doc of Qt.
* Change: In <AreaCommand>, use the PlaneId enumeration instead of a
anonymous numerical index.
* Change: In <HApplication>, no longer catch and silently discard
standartd exceptions but launch the ExceptionWidget...
Suppress the now deprecated constructor with "Type" argument.
* Change: In <SelectionModel>, the "reset()" method is deprecated in
Qt5, instead enclose the "clear()" by a "beginResetModel()" and
"endResetModel()" pair.
* New: In <crlcore>, add support for ISPD05 benchmarks (in Bookshelf
format). Forked from ISPD04 and not finished yet.
* Change: In <Mauka>, distinguish the Action string identifier from
<Etesian>
* New: In <unicorn>, add entry for ISPD05 loader. Add entry for
<Etesian> analytic placer.
Documentation restructuration:
* Bug: in <hurricane>: bad figure for transf-R1.
* Change, in <kite>: Remove deprecated configuration variables.
* New: documentation <tool> to regroup all documentation not directly
related to one tool.
* Change, in <crlcore>, move the user's guide and the top doc index
into <documentation>.
* New, in <documenation>: added Python script demo based on AM2901.
Jean-Paul Chaput