What is the file_type for SDF file

[desorya]

Hi there,

I'm trying to run gate-level simulation with existed netlist on VCS so that I need to involve a standard delay format file.
I build a fileset like below but I don't know the exact file type for it.

filesets:
  sdf:
    files:
      - single_macro/env/MLM_macro_top_A.func_ssg_Cworst_T_m40.sdf.gz

I tried sdf, sdfSource, standardDelayFormat and DELAYFILE but nothing worked(neither zipped nor unzipped). The sdf file still not shown on generated file list.

Thank you!

[olofk]

The VCS backend doesn't have support for SDF files yet.

I'm not a VCS user myself, but perhaps I can suggest a workaround. If you set file_type : user and also copyto : .. This will copy the SDF file to your work directory. If there is also some command-line option for loading SDF files, you can put that in vcs_options.

Best would of course be to have SDF directly supported, but someone needs to implement that.

[desorya]

The function that VCS uses to load the sdf file is $sdf_annotate() which only accepts string literal as input. If we use relative path as input, a FileNotFound error will be triggered because the fusesoc collects the source files and copy and put them into a new folder basing on the orders of the core file, which will disrupt the relative positions of the files.
In this case, we have to either use absolute path or add sdf file(with .gz surfix) into .core file and create a proper reference. In many cases, using absolute path is not a good choice because the path will vary from user and needs to be modified frequently. Including the sdf file in the .core file and referencing it in the tb should be a better approach, but the question here is how should we achieve that?