Make sure that you have the 3 dot files that are required to start cadence in your home directory (/home/username). To check open a terminal window. Type "cd /home/yourusername". Then type "ls -al" command at the prompt to check.

1).bash_profile

2).bashrc

3).software

If you donot have these files, download these files below by right clicking on the links and selecting "save target as". Make sure you save these file in /home/username

Always check and make sure you have opened cadence from your cadence home directory (/home/username/cadence).

If you get stuck with problems first check the ciw window and try to analyze the source of the problem.

When creating a symbol for a schematic both the library and cell name must match and even the ports should match. If not you will have compilation errors. To fix this problem in library manager window right click on the cell and make a copy of the same cell and change the view to symbol and then create the symbol for the associated schematic

/usr/local/cadence/iclocal/ncsu_local/models/(spectre||hspice)/standalone/ami06N.m

/usr/local/cadence/iclocal/ncsu_local/models/(spectre||hspice)/standalone/ami06P.m

Make sure you when you add analogLib to you path editor the library name is analogLib and not analoglib.

Concerning this, make sure you enter the numbers exactly (i.e. no space between the digit and n, etc.). If you get syntax errors later in simulation they are most likely because of this.

When cadence is not exited properly, there might be file lock problem when you restart icfb.  The error messages might look like this:

>*WARNING* Couldn't get a write lock for
>"/home/username/cadence/national/cmosx/jupiter27/j27_xjw/PFMclk/layout/layout.cdb"
>    (clscompatd): Requested lock conflicts with active lock
>*WARNING* XXopen: failed to lock file
>/home/username/cadence/national/cmosx/jupiter27/j27_xjw/PFMclk/layout/layout.cdb
>in A_MODE mode -  is currently not locked.

What can be done to remove file lock:

Use clsAdminTool to release active locks. type "clsAdminTool" to start,
then type "help" and follow the instructions.

This can also be done manually by deleting all .cdslck files under your
locked-file directories.

Go into the cadence directory first. Now type the command to make sure you have files locked. Type " find . | grep cdslck".If you find any cdslck files remove it using this command.
"for files in `find . | grep cdslck`; do rm $files; done". You can cut and paste this command. This should do it.

Sometimes icfb still complains about file lock. try exit
cadence and kill all cadence processes, then restart icfb.

If you still have the same file lock problem, it
could be a proxy lock (the warning message looks all the same).  contact
system administrator to restart file-locking daemon (cdsd).

There are two possible causes for this: either you do not have write permission to the file or you do not have a license. Cadence will allow you to open files in read-only mode without a license, but not in edit mode.

Try typing env at a unix prompt to make sure you have your license path set up correctly. After LM_LICENSE_FILE it should list /usr/local/cadence/licenses/license.dat (if it has other paths as well, that's fine)

If that doesn't work, check to make sure that you have write permission on the file. To do this, type ls -al /home/user_name/your_cadence_directory/library_name/cell_name
The files permissions for this directory should be drwxr-xr-x, the single w signifies that only the owner of the file has write permission. If you are not the owner of the file, you will not be able to make any changes to the file.

DRC checking gives me an error about missing dio_id layer

This will happen if you don't create your library correctly. Try following the directions under Library more carefully, copy the directory containing your design into the new library, and try it again.
For more information on this see http://www.cadence.ncsu.edu/doc/cdsuser/verification.html#dio_layer

How do I recover cellviews if icfb crashes?

Cadence keeps a temporary copy of the cellview that you are currently working on (called the panic cellview).  If cadence crashes, you can retrieve the panic cellview by typing dbOpenPanicCellView ("libname" "cellname" "viewname") in the CIW.  Here, libname is the library name, cellname is the name of your cellview, and viewname is either layout, schematic,...
Open your cellview after restoring the panic cell.Try to reopen the cellview before doing the dbOpenPanicCellView call or you've lost the panic cell.

Silicon Ensemble cell placement gives me the error:

** SE-USER-61 ERROR ** 14:30:50 * PLACE : * POWER/GROUND pin, inv1 gnd!, cannot appear in regular net gnd!

The first thing you must do is quit Silicon Ensemble. Once this error is loaded into the database it will keep appearing until the database is cleared. Now edit the def file to remove all power and ground nets and pins (with most standard cells they are routed automatically through abutment pins anyway). The PINS section is right after the COMPONENTS section of the file. To the right of the word "PINS" is listed the number of pins in the design. Decrease this by two and remove the first two pin declarations (vdd! and gnd!). The next section of the file is the NETS sections. vdd! and gnd! will again be listed as the first two nets. Decrese the net count by two, and remove all of the vdd! and gnd! net lists, including the lines USE POWER and USE GROUND. It is those two use declarations that caused the error: power and ground nets should not be routed as if they were regular nets. We will go back and route them by hand in Virtuoso when auto routing is done.

To get rid of this warning place an instance of the noConn instance from the basic library on that output

Go into the cadence directory and type 'ls -ald', if you see something like this 'drwx------', you have change it by typing 'chmod 755 .'. For giving permissions to any other library change the same for that folder and the cells that you want to share with 'chmod -R 755 (filename)' ( Note: '-R' option is used for changing the permissions on subdirectories recursively )

Once you are in your home directory(/home/username) type this command " mv .vcc_setup vcc_setup.old", what this command does is dump all the data that you had previously into vcc_setup.old as an backup.

You must have either moved or deleted the cds.lib file in cadence directory. Send a email to csg@iastate.edu with cadence as subject and we will find a quick fix for it.

To solve this error first close all cadence windows. Then in the command prompt cut and paste each line and this will fix the problem

export CLS_CDSD_COMPATIBILITY_LOCKING=NO

export DD_DONT_DO_OS_LOCKS=set

If you have this problem always paste these commands into you startup scripts (cds.lib in your home directory)

We have updated all linux the machines in 1331 lab with Hspice on Linux, if you notice a linux box without hpsice simulator, please send an email to csg@iastate.edu.

We have set up saturn and jupiter ( sun machines ) for automatically loading cdsdoc with all available docs. If you have problems on other machines add

Yes, as you already have the extracted view you can generate a synthesised verilog netlist using Verilog-XL and then import that to create an schematic

Here are the steps:

1) First of all you need to open up the cell in extracted view for which you want a schematic.

2) Click Tools->Verilog-XL, click the Run button, What this does it creates a netlist of the extracted view in the "Run Directory" as mentioned in Setup Environment. Here change the run directory to /local/(Library Name)

3) Copy the verilog netlist file located at /local/(Library Name)/ihnl/cds0/netlist to a file name suppose /home/(username)/cmosp35/schematic.v".

4) Now in the main CIW window of cadence click File-> Import -> Verilog

5) Do create a test library which you can put in the "Target Library Name" in Verilog input popup., in "Reference Libraries" I had to include cmosp35 and in "Verilog Files to Import" put the file saved as in step 3 (i.e, /home/(username)/cmosp35/schematic.v).

6) Apply and your schematic should be created in the "Target Library Name" as you mentioned.

For making 100% sure the schematic is correct run LVS with the created schematic.

While you try saving a functional view after editing it you see an error similar to something below

Error at line 1 of /tmp/.vliba25522 for /tmp/.vliba25522 line 1: directory /tmp/vliba25522

of LIB vanlib does not have a CDSLIBRARY entry in its cdsinfo.tag file.:

Library doesn't have a CDSLIBRARY entry in its cdsinfo.tag file.

When you see this error open up the file cdsinfo.tag located in /home/(username)/cadence/cdsinfo.tag and the edit the file changing "CDSLIBCHECK OFF"

After making the changes make sure if you had cadence open to close it and run it again.

Yes, you can do this, by doing this you can speed up your simulations magnificently as you will be saving the results on the local machine and not the nfs server, BUT if you use the local machine you must remember to copy the most recent and important work to your home directory, as we would delete stuff older then a month as this is for all users and when the system runs out of space the data saved on the local machine might be deleted for clearing up space.

You can either copy the initialization file using this command, This file will change your default simulation directory to "/local/(username)/simulation"

cp /usr/local/cadence/iclocal/ncsu_local/environment/.cdsinit /home/(username)

*(Replace "(username)" with your username )

You are seeing this because you did not untar isucells.tar file in the directory that you are running silicon ensemble from. You get this error when you copy the isucells.lef file from other existing directory to your current directory. To fix this problem in the current working directory from where you are running "sedsm" type this

mkdir LBRARY

Now run sedsm -m=60 &

If you still have problem email csg@iastate.edu for further help.

This error can be caused by a lot of reasons, but the one that we commonly notice is the /tmp directory on the remote machine being filled up

This error is caused because you have the "Correspondence file" option enabled in LVS popup window.

Uncheck the box and it will run LVS successfully.