Editor's Note: It's been two months since my landlord held "The Poor Man's
Woodstock" at my farm (ESNUG 192) but I *still* get e-mail from people
asking how it went. Here goes: We had 450+ "guests" come dance in the
rain to the six bands with about 270 staying overnight camping in the
fields. (The sheep were put in a far back pasture with the "Out of Sight,
Out of Mind" paradigm in action.) The first five bands were professional
bar bands who did fantastic Bonnie Raitt, Eagles, Joe Walsh, Sting,
Led Zepplin, Rolling Stones, Indigo Girls, Joan Baez and Fleetwood Mac.
The last "band" was a bunch of high school kids into making loud screaching
guitar sounds, yelling, random drumming and general noise that no one could
recognize. (It was so bad that everyone was *thanking* the police when
they shut the "band" down at 11:PM!) By the end of the next day everyone
was gone, we had over 35 bags of garbage on the front curb and the landlord
asked all the tenants to take only quick showers because apartment #2 let
~70 people use their bathroom and, hence, the septic system was very full!
- John Cooley
the ESNUG guy
( ESNUG 198 Item 1 ) ---------------------------------------------- [10/94]
Subject: (ESNUG 196 #6) "Hotline Refuses To Help Via E-mail"
> The Synopsys hotline folks fail to respect requests to communicate via
> e-mail.... Not only are they ignoring my request to use e-mail, but they
> are failing to leave a voice message which indicates exactly what questions
> they need answered!... I specifically ask them for NO PHONE CALLS, I want
> to communicate via email; yet they repeatedly ignore this request.
From: klein@ATB.teradyne.com (Larry Klein)
Actually I had a problem that I submitted by e-mail and was answered
solely by e-mail. Then, they followed up a few days later with a verbal
questioner asking whether I was satisfied with their support on that issue.
- Larry Klein
Teradyne
---- ---- ---- ----
From: greg@cqt.com (Greg Bell)
I too prefer E-mail communication with the group and most of the time
they respond using E-mail. I agree with you on the general uselessness
of voice mail responses, but in my experience they're pretty rare.
> When I actually do call back, I'm usually forced to wait because
> the individual is not at their desk, OR they're helping someone else.
Do you think there's a 1:1 ratio between user's and techs?! I've
found the response time to be a LOT shorter than most of the other tech
support departments I've dealt with.
- Greg Bell
CommQuest Technologies, Inc.
---- ---- ---- ----
From: frazer@idtinc.COM (Andrew Frazer)
I have expereinced that same thing from Synopsys a few times over the past
two months. I also share the user's frustration. I don't know why they do
this phone only contact? Do the Synopsys people think a telephone is more
convenient than e-mail? That's very unusual.
- Andy Frazer
Integrated Device Technology
---- ---- ---- ----
From: black@mpd.tandem.com (David C. Black)
I second this user's frustration. Synopsys is not the only company to have
employees with this phone instead of e-mail attitude. (In their defense,
there are folks within Synopsys sympathetic to this user's situation.) I do
not believe it is a corporate policy, but a lack of policy.
The problem in my case is that I am rarely if ever available via phone at
work. My job role causes me to be constantly on the move within my
organization. Additionally, the lack of adequate resources makes it more
difficult to deal with phone messages than e-mail.
Successful communication requires e-mail for some individuals. Whereas, I
recognize the importance of a human touch to problems (frequently the
reasoning used by companies), it is not always realistic. In fact it is
becoming more and more the norm to use e-mail as the primary vehicle for
communication.
I would like to suggest that Synopsys issue a corporate directive to
respect individual customer's requests in this area. Perhaps this
directive should also be shared with customers so that we know the
mechanisms (e.g. Does the customer need to specify 'E-mail REPLIES ONLY'
in every communication). This is a P.R. area that companies cannot afford
to ignore. Remember, "the customer is always right even when the customer
is wrong." At least in an area such as this one.
- David C. Black
Tandem Computers, Inc.
( ESNUG 198 Item 2 ) ---------------------------------------------- [10/94]
Subject: (ESNUG Post 196#0) "How Did SNUG Europe Go?"
>Editor's Question: How did the SNUG Europe '94 meeting go? Let's see
>some reports! What were the best & worst presentations/talks? Was language
>an issue? How many actual users attended? Did Synopsys sales & marketing
>reps take over the microphones and drone for hours on end? Any good after
>hours parties? Hot gossip? Inquiring minds want to know!
From: seahuh@sea.ericsson.se (Hartmut Huber)
Hi John!
I felt this was a Synopsys Product Manager's mis-speculation -*OR*- "how to
avoid users attending by charging them FF 600 (US $120)." I didn't attend,
since I didn't want to tell my boss that I wanted to go to 5 simultaneous
sessions at the EuroDAC, EuroVHDL -*AND*- SNUG Europe, too. Some others
felt like me and so a lot of would-have-gones missed the event and went to
the EuroDAC conference only. Cadence in 1993 just invited those who were
interested and had good results with that - a suggestion for Synopsys for
next year?
- Hartmut Huber
Ericsson Schrack AG, AUSTRIA
---- ---- ---- ----
From: Andy.Chomyn@proteon.com (Andy Chomyn)
Some quick, general comments on Euro SNUG '94:
- Grenoble appeared to be a maze of one-way streets, I spent some time
trying to figure out a way to the conference from Euro-VHDL. To quote
a Synopsan : "It took me 10 minutes to walk here but for Peter to drive
here took 40 minutes."
- Presentations were, in general, good. The opening presentations by
Synopsys gave rise to good discussions; especially over ISO compliance.
As expected, some vendor presentations started to become sales pitches
for their own services - not really what I was there for. The "open
floor" discussions appeared to really work.
- It was good that the VHDL expo was on at the same time - it gave a
chance to see new products, i.e: Design Power, and then discuss them
and other issues during the user group.
- The SNUG party - nice setting, but just another cold buffet.
- The Tutorials - good idea. The one I attended - VHDL Coding Tricks
and Techniques, hosted by Joe Pick - was excellent even though I knew
some of the tricks. It helped re-enforce the high level aspects of the
language. Hope all the others were as good.
I'm not too sure about next year's venue for EURO-VHDL ( and SNUG Europe, if
it's on at the same time ) being in Brighton. Access could be awkward for
foreign visitors. Birmingham / NEC is a more obvious choice.
- Andy Chomyn
Proteon International
( ESNUG 198 Item 3 ) ---------------------------------------------- [10/94]
Subject: (ESNUG 197 #4) "How to Get VHDL Structural In Reverse Order"
>Does anyone know how to get Synopsys to write out a VHDL structural netlist
>in the reverse order? Synopsys currently writes the structural netlist
>from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom of the hierarchy when writing
>to an output file. The reason this is needed is because one of our VHDL
>simulators (Model Technologies) prefers to compile starting from the bottom
>of the hierarchy.
From: jill@zycad.com (Jill Wilker)
At my previous position in a different company, I encountered this also.
Basically, I found two temporary solutions and two future solutions.
The two temporary solutions are:
1. write a script to reverse the order
2. write out each entity in a separate file.
A primary problem is that with generics, uniquify, etc., the name and number
of files read into design compiler is not equal to the resulting output
entities. (At the time, I chose the second option [I am not sure that
decision was the wisest -- option 1 probably would have been less prone to
error].)
With the second option, this means that you now have to get the hierarchy
order written. The *only* way that I found to do this is via a
report_hierarchy. Unfortunately, I found flaky results such that the
report_hierarchy was not *always* correct [and not always incorrect]; I
solved this by using separate directories for the structural vhdl output and
the simulation area... If there was a "good" hierarchy file in the simulation
area, I just used it. If not, then I edited the hierarchy file via a perl
script [included below] to strip off the header info, take out library
elements (primitives), and reverse the order. Finally, in my makefile setup,
I did the for loop with a `cat foo.deslist`. This will give you the order
for compilation.
As a longer term real solution, we pushed to have Model Technologies commit
to be able to read in the reverse order for version 4.3 [I think that was
the version that they committed for -- check with the support folks at
Model Tech for this]. Additionally, I filed an "enhancement" request with
Synopsys to be able to choose the ordering. [I will omit the discussion
trying to convince Synopsys that the order that the file was top-down always!]
- Jill Wilker
Zycad Corporation
In case anyone cares, here is the simple perl script to edit the hierarchy
file as generated by Synopsys. Note: there is NO error checking on the
input arguments since this was always called within a Makefile and if that
was a problem, horrible deaths would have already occurred! :-)
#!/local/bin/perl
#
## Usage: edit_hier foo.deshier foo.deslist
#
LIBRARY_NAME = <fill in your library name> ;
open(DESHIER, $ARGV[0]) || die "Can not open $ARGV[0]\n";
open(DESLIST, ">$ARGV[1]") || die "Can not open $ARGV[1]\n";
sub bynum { $a <=> $b }
$errcountr = 0;
while (<DESHIER>) {
/^\*.*/ && next;
/^Report/ && next;
/^Design/ && next;
/^Version/ && next;
/^Date/ && next;
/^Information/ && next;
/^Warning/ && next;
/^Loading/ && next;
/^\s*\.\.\./ && next;
/^\s*$/ && next;
/^.*$LIBRARY_NAME$/ && next;
/^.*gtech$/ && next;
/^.*GTECH$/ && next;
/^\s\w.*$/ && next;
/^Error.*/ && do { $errcountr++; next; };
s|^(\s*)|length($1)/4|e && push(@hier,$_);
}
@sorthier = reverse(sort(bynum @hier));
foreach (@sorthier) {
/^\d+(\S+)/;
print DESLIST "$1\n";
}
if ($errcountr > 0) {
print STDOUT "\n";
print STDOUT "Synopsys Reported $errcountr Error(s) in $ARGV[0]\n";
print STDOUT "\n";
}
( ESNUG 198 Item 4 ) ---------------------------------------------- [10/94]
From: [ Name Withheld ]
Subject: (ESNUG 195 #0 196 #2 197 #3) "Synopsys Announcing DesignPower"
(Egads, John! Post No name, No address, No nuthin' ... I suffer from
Synopcosis -- the fear of corporate reprisals from you know who.)
LSI Logic has had a power analysis tool for years, even prior to the mutation,
er, creation of VHDL. Originally called LPOW, (now called the Power Analyzer
in CMDE) it was designed to evaluate instantaneous dynamic power and average
it over time, it also reports power spikes.
The main problem with dynamic analysis is that the simulation stimulus must
mimic the actual circuit operation EXACTLY. Also, you must remember to
include proper output loading, as it will be in the system. Otherwise you
get trash for results. To increase your chances of getting things right,
remember to use asynchronous stimulus (i.e. not all of the signals of a data
bus arrive at the same time.)
Even with the best stimulus and models, don't expect better than 70-80%
accuracy from any such tool vs. the actual silicon.
- [ Name Witheld ]
( ESNUG 198 Networking Section ) ---------------------------------- [10/94]
Allentown, PA: AT&T Bell Labs needs a Synopsys Library Developer / VHDL
Modeler (VSS) for the AT&T ORCA FPGA family. E-mail "smg@aluxpo.att.com"
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