Auto-Generation of Performance Charts with the VMM Performance Analyzer
Posted by Amit Sharma on September 30th, 2011
Amit Sharma, Synopsys
Quoting from one of Janick’s earlier blog on the VMM Performance Analyzer Analyzing results of the Performance Analyzer with Excel,
”The VMM Performance Analyzer stores its performance-related data in a SQL database.SQL was chosen because it is an IEEEANSI/ISO standard with a multiplicity of implementation, from powerful enterprise systems like Oracle, to open source versions like MySQL to simple file-based like SQLite. SQL offers the power of a rich query and analysis language to generate the reports that are relevant to yourapplication.”
And given that everyone doesn’t understand SQL, he goes on to show how one can get VMM Performance Analyzer data from a SQLite database into an Excel spreadsheet and then subsequently analyze the data by doing any additional computation and creating the appropriate graphs. This involves a set of steps leveraging the SQlite ODBC (Open Database Conduit) and thus requires the installation of the same.
This article presents a mechanism how TCL scripts are used to bring in the next level of automation so that the users can retrieve the required data from the SQL DB and even automate the process of results analysis by auto-generating the relevant performance charts for statistical analysis.. Also, as users migrate to using DVE as a single platform for their design debug, coverage analysis, verification planning, it is shown how these scripts can be integrated into DVE, so that the generation process is a matter of using the relevant menus and clicking on the appropriate buttons in DVE.
For generating the SQL databases with the VMM Performance Analyzer, an SQLite Installation is required which can be obtained from www.sqlite.org. Once, you have installed it, you would need to set the SQLITE3_HOME environment variable to the path where its installed. Once that is done, these are the following steps that you need to follow to generate the appropriate graphs out of the data gets generated out of your batch regressions runs..
First, you need to download the utility from the link provided in the article DVE TCL Utility for Auto-Generation of Performance Charts
Once it is extracted, you can try it on the tl_bus examples that ships with the utility. You would need to go the directory vmm_perf_utility/tl_bus.
Use make to run the tl_bus which will generate the sql_data.db and sql_data.sql. Now, go to the ‘chart_utility’ directory
(cd vmm_perf_utility/chart_utility/)
The TCL scripts which are involved in the automation of the performance charts are in this directory.
This script vmm_perf_utility/chart_utility/chart.tcl can then be executed from inside DVE as shown below
Once, that is done, it will add will add a button “Generate Chart” in View menu.. BTW, adding a button is fairly simple..
eg: gui_set_hotkey -menu “View->Generate Chart” -hot_key “G”
is how the button gets added..
Now, click on a “Generate Chart” to select the sql database.
This will bring up the dialog box to select the SQL database..
Once, the appropriate data base is selected, the user can select which table to work with and then generate the appropriate.. The options would be provided to the user based on the data that is dumped into the SQL database.. From the combinations of charts, that is shown, select the graph that you want to generate and the required graphs will be generated for you. This is what you can see when you use the SQL DB generated for the TL bus example
Once, you have made the selections, you would see the following chart generated..
Now, obviously, you as a user would not just want the graphs to be generated but you would also want these values to be available to you..
Thus, once you use this chart generation mechanism, the relevant .csv files corresponding to the graphs that you have generated would also be dumped for you..
This will be generated in the perfReports directory that would be created as well.. So, you can do any additional custom computation in Excel or by running your own scripts.. To generate the graphs for any other example, you just need to pick up the appropriate SQL DB that was generated based on your simulation runs and then subsequently generate the reports and graphs of your interest.
So whether you use the Performance Analyzer in VMM (Performance and statistical analysis from HDL simulations using the VMM Performance Analyzer) or in UVM (Using the VMM Performance Analyzer in a UVM Environment) and even while you are doing your own PA customizations Performance appraisal time – Getting the analyzer to give more feedback , you can easily generate whatever charts you require which would easily help you analyze all the different performance aspects of the design you are verifying..
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