Another debug view in the UVM Toolbox

One of the biggest endearing qualities of a debug environment for any type of coding is availability of multiple ways to accomplish a task. Whether the preference is keyboard shortcuts, mouse left-click drill-down and right-click pull-down menus, source code view, hierarchical class view, or graphical relationship view, a good debugger just lets developers be productive.

With a variety of tools arrayed within a debug environment, it is easy to pick and choose the way information is viewed and accessed, and control the level of detail needed. Sometimes, the fastest way is a simplified view of functions and variables. Other times, a more robust view of complex relationships is handy, especially to see interprocedural issues.

Aldec continues their quest to enhance their mixed-language, advanced verification platform, this time with the latest Aldec Riviera-PRO 2014.06 release. Beyond the obligatory gains in performance and language support with each new version, Aldec has been concentrating of late on their visual debug capability for UVM.

In our previous installment on UVM tools from Aldec, we saw the UVM Graph feature which helps visualize relationships within a testbench model. The new UVM Toolbox feature provides the quick and easy version of how to find a component with a simplified, tree-like hierarchy. UVM Toolbox is completely synchronized with UVM Graph, as well as the Class Viewer and HDL Editor, allowing developers to jump between views as desired while retaining context.

The hierarchy reveals parent-child relationships of UVM components easily and clearly. When a component is selected in UVM Toolbox, object properties are displayed. With an emphasis on speed of access and readability, the new view is a solid addition.

Another capability of Riviera-PRO is the waveform viewer, and it has been extended to include support for hierarchical virtual objects. This means that virtual records and arrays can be created, including other virtual objects and named rows. Also added is an antialiasing option in the Analog tab, which can help clean up views of analog waveforms.

Also noteworthy are changes to maintain the integrity of a development environment given what else is going on in the world. For those still clinging to a Windows XP development box, it’s time to move on – this is the first Aldec Riviera-PRO release to declare non-support for Win XP. Also, the OpenSSL library has been updated to the Heartbleed-free 1.0.1g version, as well as updates to the 2.8 version of the OVL library, the 2014.01 version of the OSVVM library, and the 1.2 version of the UVM library (uvm_1_2) included in a precompiled version.

In related news, the educational version of Riviera-PRO EDU is now available on EDA Playground. While it may not have all of the advanced features we’ve been discussing, it is an easy way for students and developers to learn about HDL simulation and debug.

For more on Aldec Riviera-PRO 2014.06, see the What’s New presentation.

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