CosmosScope Premier graphical waveform analyzer

Overview
Today’s complex integrated circuit (IC) designs generate a vast amount of simulation data. CosmosScope™ turns that mountain of data into useful information. With powerful analysis and measurement capabilities, patented waveform-calculator technology, and scripting language based on the industry standard Tcl/Tk, CosmosScope offers unparalleled capability and flexibility to analyze design performance and ensure design quality. CosmosScope supports all Synopsys simulators: HSPICE®, NanoSim™, Saber® and SaberHDL.

CosmosScope benefits

• Supports all Synopsys simulation products with a single viewer including HSPICE, NanoSim Saber, and SaberHDL
• Provides powerful Tcl/Tk-based scripting language for easy customization
• Performs post-processing of analog and digital simulation results
• Automatically annotates graphs with design information using true WYSIWYG graphics, including arrows, shapes and text
• Annotates graphs with 50 types of measurements for immediate visual feedback on design performance
• Saves and restores graphs for further editing—entire CosmosScope sessions can be saved and restored to pick up where you left off
• Streamlines the design process through tight integration with Synopsys’ Cosmos™ full-custom design environment and third-party design frameworks

Begin with signal manager
A CosmosScope session begins with selection of signals for graphing and analysis. The signal manager helps navigate complex simulation output files by listing signal names and using indentation to indicate the design hierarchy. Double-click on a signal name to expand or collapse lists of lower-level signals. This is particularly helpful in system-on-chip (SoC) designs that have hundreds of signals. Advanced filtering shows only the signals with desired characteristics.

CosmosScope makes it easy to analyze statistical analyses results. The signal manager makes it simple to open multiple output files to compare results generated in different sessions by different simulators.

Graphing signals
CosmosScope offers a wide variety of graph display formats to suit individual preferences. When viewing analyses in the frequency domain, the designer can easily switch between Bode, Nichols, and Nyquist diagrams and Smith charts. Graphs automatically display signal units such as current, voltage, watts, and so forth. Viewing analyses in the time domain is accomplished by using analog graph views, or trace views to see large number of digital, analog and mixed-signal results in a strip-chart-like trace window.

Compared to other analog waveform viewers, CosmosScope offers greater flexibility in viewing digital waveforms. Signals can be displayed as bits, buses or registers in binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal or floating- point representations. Buses can be viewed in typical timing-diagram format or can be shown as a “stepped” waveform —useful when viewing a bus or register value as an integer or when comparing the digital input to a digital-to-analog converter with its analog output signal.

It’s also easy to analyze results of analyses that generate multiple runs, such as Monte Carlo analysis or parametric variation. Select the name of a signal, bring up the pop-up menu, and then choose whether to look at multiple or individual runs. Each curve is automatically annotated with parameter values.

Interactive graphical measurement
The real objective in analyzing a design is to determine whether the design meets specifications. Was the rise time fast enough? Was the overshoot too high?

The CosmosScope measurement tool offers more than 50 automatic measurements in the time domain, frequency domain, and s-domain as well as statistical measurements like mean, average, median, and standard deviation. CosmosScope is unique because the measurement tool is fully graphical and interactive. Measurement results are annotated directly onto the diagram. Cross hairs clearly indicate where the measurements were applied. Designers can also interact with a measurement by double clicking on it. For example, a risetime measurement can be rapidly changed from 10-90 percent to 20-80 percent.

Measurements can generate new waveforms. For example, to see a plot of how a voltage-controlled oscillator's output frequency changes as a function of input voltage, a designer can measure the frequency of the VCO output and automatically produce a graph of output frequency vs. input voltage. In turn, the slope of this signal can be measured.

Waveform calculator
Synopsys’ waveform calculator tool allows designers to further analyze simulation results. They can select signals from the signal manager or any graph and paste these signal names into the registers of the waveform calculator. The keyboard of the calculator allows entry of numerical values or execution of operations on the signals. With the waveform calculator, a designer can:

• Build complex expressions interactively
• Use more than 70 different mathematical functions, including logical operations on digital waveforms and transformations such as FFT and IFFT
• Easily store expressions for later use
• Program the calculator to include any number of expressions
• Graph waveforms directly from the calculator

Customizable graphs
Designers have created their graphs and done their calculations, but now want to take care of the fine points. CosmosScope lets them modify the axis labels including the color and font of the text, change the color and style of the curves on the graphs, and move the graph legend. To edit any label in CosmosScope, simply point the cursor where text is to be inserted and start typing—no separate form is necessary.

The CosmosScope drawing tool enables annotation of graphs with free-form text, arrows, lines, and squares to draw attention to important results. And with “text variables”, CosmosScope automatically annotates predefined fields onto graphs, such as a name or time and date stamps.

Flexible documentation of results
CosmosScope provides flexibility in documenting results. Page layout forms allow specification of paper size and graph alignment and creation of oversize graphs spanning several pages. Designers can export popular office automation formats for inclusion in documents or presentations. Formats include PostScript, JPEG, TIFF, PCL5, EMF, and HPGL2.

Advanced save and restore saves time
With most waveform-analysis products, each session must be started from scratch, requiring valuable time searching for data files, rearranging windows, and so forth. CosmosScope, however, allows an entire session to be saved. Arrangements of windows, complete graphs, calculator contents and macros can be restored from a previous session to continue work without interruption.

After creation, any number of graphs, complete with annotations, text variables, and measurements can be saved. Then, in a later session, the graphs can be quickly restored for modification or for use as the basis for a new graph. CosmosScope also incorporates graph outlines that let designers apply axis-range labels, annotations, text variables and measurements to new sets of waveforms; this allows definition of a standard template for subsequent sets of graphs and measurements.

Design process integration
Designers can run CosmosScope alone as a post-processing tool, or as an integrated member of the CosmosSE™ design suite. CosmosScope is invoked from the design editor in Cosmos.

Integration between CosmosSE applications is seamless. To cross-probe a signal, select a net in CosmosSE and then view the corresponding waveform in CosmosScope. Drawings, annotations and symbols are easily copied and pasted between Cosmos applications.

CosmosScope has a waveform reader applications programming interface (API) that allows a third party to integrate results from other simulation tools into CosmosScope. Thus a design team can use CosmosScope waveform analysis for all simulation results, thereby minimizing training and support costs.

For more information about Synopsys products, support services or training, visit us on the web at www.synopsys.com, contact your local sales representative or call 650.584.5000.