Pause and resume functionality in GTKWave Viewer.

| Hi All,
| I am using Icarus Verilog compiler and GTKWave as a viewer.
| My question is, can I pause a simulation in Icarus, take a .vcd dump
| (till the paused point), view it in GTKWave and then continue the
| simulation till another point, again pause it there and view the
| results of the second part without loading a new dump altogether ?
|
| I have tried to find out whether this is possible in GTKWave (using
| whatever online help that's available), but couldn't get anywhere.
|
| Any help on this would be really appreciated.
|
| Thanks in advance,
| Amit.

In gtkwave-3.0.8:

1) Create named pipe in your filesystem: mkfifo filename.vcd
2) Use the filename in (1) as the name of your dumpfile:
$dumpfile("filename.vcd")
3) shmidcat filename.vcd | gtkwave -v -I filename.sav

....there is no need to pause simulation. You can watch the VCD build
in progress as it is read from the named pipe if you zoom out far
enough. The scrollbar at the bottom of the screen will also
shrink/move to reflect the growing status of the VCD file.

-t

 

[mk]

On 7 Aug 2006 10:20:23 -0700, bybell@rocketmail.com wrote:

| Hi All,
| I am using Icarus Verilog compiler and GTKWave as a viewer.
| My question is, can I pause a simulation in Icarus, take a .vcd dump
| (till the paused point), view it in GTKWave and then continue the
| simulation till another point, again pause it there and view the
| results of the second part without loading a new dump altogether ?
|
| I have tried to find out whether this is possible in GTKWave (using
| whatever online help that's available), but couldn't get anywhere.
|
| Any help on this would be really appreciated.
|
| Thanks in advance,
| Amit.

In gtkwave-3.0.8:

1) Create named pipe in your filesystem: mkfifo filename.vcd
2) Use the filename in (1) as the name of your dumpfile:
$dumpfile("filename.vcd")
3) shmidcat filename.vcd | gtkwave -v -I filename.sav

...there is no need to pause simulation. You can watch the VCD build
in progress as it is read from the named pipe if you zoom out far
enough. The scrollbar at the bottom of the screen will also
shrink/move to reflect the growing status of the VCD file.

-t

Does this also work under windows ?
BTW, 3.0.8 binary of GTKWave for windows is available here:
http://www.dspia.com/gtkwave.html

 

mk wrote:

Does this also work under windows ?
BTW, 3.0.8 binary of GTKWave for windows is available here:
http://www.dspia.com/gtkwave.html

Nope, the dynamic loading/interactive feature doesn't work under
windows (yet) as I haven't looked up how to establish shared memory
handles under Win32.

-t

 

mk wrote:

BTW, 3.0.8 binary of GTKWave for windows is available here:
http://www.dspia.com/gtkwave.html

In 3.0.9, I pushed out a quick fix today for a bug in 3.0.8 for
dynamically loaded traces (blank traces cause a viewer crash), but this
doesn't affect the windows version so there's no need for a recompile
of it.

-t