making OS calls from w/in the simulator

Is there some easy way, perhaps via a system task, to call routines
outside the simulator. A colleague wants to send some stuff to file,
but do a bit of preprocessing on it with a C program or Perl
script. For some reason, she needs to PRE-process it, as opposed to
post-processing. We'd like to stay vendor neutral, but could also use
any Synopsys-based solution.

thanks,
Eric

 

[naren]

noman@cyclops.org wrote:

Is there some easy way, perhaps via a system task, to call routines
outside the simulator. A colleague wants to send some stuff to file,
but do a bit of preprocessing on it with a C program or Perl
script. For some reason, she needs to PRE-process it, as opposed to
post-processing. We'd like to stay vendor neutral, but could also use
any Synopsys-based solution.

thanks,
Eric

I can't think of any solution other than PLI..
System Verilog's DPI is much easier to call. So you could try that if
your company has System Verilog license.
You could also try http://ruby-vpi.rubyforge.org/ &
http://jove.sf.net/docs/jove-faq/index.html ..
I also think there are other interfaces like perl, python & tcl to PLI,
which will make your job more easier... try googling on them...

Rgds,
Naren.
TooMuch Semiconductor Solutions,
Specialising in Verification Solutions.

 

[EdA]

Have you tried $system?

/Ed

noman@cyclops.org wrote:

Is there some easy way, perhaps via a system task, to call routines
outside the simulator. A colleague wants to send some stuff to file,
but do a bit of preprocessing on it with a C program or Perl
script. For some reason, she needs to PRE-process it, as opposed to
post-processing. We'd like to stay vendor neutral, but could also use
any Synopsys-based solution.

thanks,
Eric

 

[EdA]

$system is in the VCS manual...

Google seems to strip the leading $ in $system so I've had limited luck
searching for it.
Is there a regular expression search engine out there?

I did find this reference to $system:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/verilog-faq/

Apparently $system isn't in the -1995 or -2001 standards.

/Ed

EdA wrote:

Have you tried $system?

/Ed

noman@cyclops.org wrote:
Is there some easy way, perhaps via a system task, to call routines
outside the simulator. A colleague wants to send some stuff to file,
but do a bit of preprocessing on it with a C program or Perl
script. For some reason, she needs to PRE-process it, as opposed to
post-processing. We'd like to stay vendor neutral, but could also use
any Synopsys-based solution.

thanks,
Eric

 

EdA wrote:

Apparently $system isn't in the -1995 or -2001 standards.

It is nonstandard, but commonly available in simulators. It is easy
enough to use. You just give it a string that is the command you want
to run (e.g. a Unix shell command line if you are using Unix).

 

Thanks for all the responses. You've been very helpful.

Adios,
Eric