Flowtracer at BWRC: FlowtracerNC FlowtracerEDA

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Flowtracer at BWRC Flowtracer/NCFlowtracer/EDA

• Nov 15, 2002

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Outline

• Flowtracer/NC
• Network computing
• Flowtracer/EDA
• Flow implementation, management, optimization
• Demo
• Flowtracer/NC
• Flowtracer/EDA
• BEE Flow

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Lineage of Flowtracer
VOV at UCB Octtools 5.1 1989-1991
VOV at Siemens RD Munich Germany 1991-1995
RTDA Founded Alameda, CA March 1995
Renamed to Flowtracer/NC Flowtracer/EDA 1999
First OCT-less release Flowtracer 7.0 June 2002
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Introducing Runtime Design Automation

• Network computing and flow management solutions
  for EDA environments
• Founded in 1995
• Headquarters in Fremont, CA
• RD in Padova, Italy
• Self-funded
• Patented technology for intelligent change
  propagation

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Customers
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Network Computing

• Problem
• Designs get bigger schedules get tighter EDA
  tools get more expensive budgets are limited
• Goals
• Make optimum use of all computing resources and
  software licenses
• Dedicate the right resource to the right job, at
  the right time, automatically
• Allow designers to focus on design
• Obtain measurements to improve process, plan
  purchases

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Flowtracer/NC

• Network computing optimized for EDA
• Automatic dispatching, queuing, load balancing
• Each job to fastest machine that offers necessary
  resources
• Fair share follow programmed management policy
  to deal with competition for resources
• Near zero latency critical for small jobs
• Capacity to manage thousands of resources CPUs,
  RAM, software licenses, etc.
• Easy to install/use
• Web interface check on jobs from anywhere

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Resource Management

• At project or corporate level -- or across
  geographies
• Move licenses where they are needed
• Fair share of processing power
• By group or user (user can be in multiple groups)
• Allocate CPUs to achieve desired ratios between
  groups/users
• Kicks in automatically when competition for
  resources
• Heterogeneous platforms, network file systems,
  license types
• Steal cycles on workstations
• Send only small jobs, or time-based availability
• Detect keyboard, mouse activity

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Visualization

• At a glance
• Whats run
• Successful
• Failed

• Zoom in on failure

• Click to view relevant log files without searching

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Measurements

• Decision to purchase additional EDA licenses
  based on
• Engineers complain
• License manager metrics usage stats for each
  license, no knowledge of queuing system
• Flowtracer/NC measurements include
• Unmet demand
• Why license unused no demand, waiting for
  machine,

Flowtracer/NC measurements enable better
purchasing decisions
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Optimized for EDA

• Works with EDA industry standard license managers
• FLEXlm, SILVACO,
• Wide range of jobs extremely short to extremely
  long
• Near-Zero latency
• Tendency for EDA jobs to fail
• Visualization
• Failure analysis
• Large number of compute resources and licenses
• Largest capacity for resource management

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Network Computing EDA Applications

• Increase throughput via parallel computing on
  server farms for
• Simulation and verification
• Synthesis
• System-level design
• Analog design
• Cell characterization
• Extraction and analysis
• Regression testing
• And more...

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Hidden Inefficiencies in Flows

• Designers constantly look for more efficient
  tools and methodologies
• Design flow itself is often the source of hidden
  inefficiencies
• Re-running sub-flow when inputs have not changed
• Not taking advantage of opportunities for
  parallelism
• Inefficient use of hardware and software
  resources
• Spending too much time writing and maintaining
  scripts

How can you increase the efficiency of the
overall design flow?
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Flowtracer/EDADesign Flow Management

• Eliminate flow redundancies through dependency
  management
• Exploit opportunities for parallelism
  automatically
• Speed up failure analysis with failure tracking
• Automate the capture and execution of best
  practices in design
• Use hardware and software resources efficiently

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Automate the Automation

• Dependency relationship defined by tool
  inputs/outputs
• Flowtracer/EDA automatically extracts
  dependencies from tools at run-time
• Automatically creates correct, complete,
  up-to-date dependency graph to drive flow

No more manual tracking of dependencies or
time-sink of writing/maintaining scripts
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Dependencies Drive Execution

• Execution based on dependency graph
• Subflow does not execute until all inputs ready
• Automatically exploits opportunities for
  parallelism
• Uses built-in Flowtracer/NC network computing
  technology

Eliminate redundancies, better use of resources
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Only Execute When Needed

• Patented runtime change propagation control
  determines if an input has relevant changes
  before re-execution of a sub-flow
• Looks beyond timestamps
• Will not allow comment change to prompt
  re-execution

Eliminate redundancies and human error in
re-executing flows
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Visualize Design Flow

• Capture, clarify, and edit your design flow
• Ability to focus at flow level leads to
  improvements

picture
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Design Status At-a-Glance

• At a glance
• Whats run
• Successful
• Failed

• Zoom in on failure

• Click to walk through dependencies to view
  relevant log files without searching

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Capture Best Practices

• Capture and document highly complex design flows
• Without spending inordinate time on scripts
• Focus on design of design flows
• Capture expertise of experienced designers in
  flows executed by more junior engineers

Customer used Flowtracer/EDA and a team that
averaged less than 6 months experience to design
130 million transistor chip
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Flowtracer/EDA Features

• Automatic generation of dependency graph
• Saves time and eliminates errors vs. scripts,
  make
• Visualization of design flows
• Clarify flows and easily edit at design flow
  level
• Visualization of design status and failure
  tracking
• See status at-a-glance, and quickly analyze
  failures
• Built-in network computing
• Exploit opportunities for parallelism maximize
  resource use
• Runtime change propagation control
• Eliminate iterations for insignificant changes
• Multiple user interfaces, including GUI, command
  line, web/browser, and Tcl extension/API
• Work from anywhere, create custom UI

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Flowtracer/EDA Summary

• Eliminate inefficiencies hidden in the design
  flow
• Dont execute what doesnt need to be executed
• Exploit parallelism and use resources efficiently
• Eliminate human error and tedious job of
  writing/maintaining make scripts
• Use dependencies to quickly find the cause of
  errors

Automate design flow automation
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Flowtracer/NC demo

• Setup
• source /tools/commercial/rtda/7.0/common/etc/vov
  rc.csh
• One command vnc
• vnc run options sleep 30
• vnc wait 12212
• vnc info 12212
• vnc stop 12212
• vnc monitor
• vnc summary

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Flowtracer/EDAThe BEE flow

• Problem decomposition
• Environment Management
• Environments BWRC, ENC, PLATO, SYNOPSYS.
• Tools, tool integration
• Flow Description
• BeeFlow.tcl
• Reporting built-in, custom CGI.
• Job Control, Flow Control, stdout/stderr capture,
  dependencies, parallelism, incremental execution,
  resource management, queueing,
• Provided automatically by Flowtracer/EDA

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The environment ENC

• This file can be shared across the entire BWRC
  site.
• No need for users/scripts to know about these
  variables
• To load the environment use ves ENC

• Environment variables needed to run
  FirstEncounter.
• setenv LM_LICENSE_FILE 5280_at_sunu2-1.eecs.berkeley.
  edu
• setenv ENCOUNTER /tools/cds99/FE21/spc
• set path ( ENCOUNTER/bin path )

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The tool synth.script

• As generated by insecta2
• ! /usr/bin/sh -f
• /tools/synopsys/2002.05/sparcOS5/syn/bin/dc_shell
  -f /vol/hitz/home/rtda/bwrc_demo/tut1/default_dc_s
  cript tee -i /vol/hitz/home/rtda/bwrc_demo/tut1/
  synt.script.synthesis.log

After the Flowtracer cure !/bin/sh dc_shell -f
default_dc_script tee -i synt.script.synthesis.l
og exit status
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The Flow Definition File BeeFlow.tcl
Parameter chip -default demo -doc "Name of
the chip" Parameter effort -choice normal low
high Parameter optimze -choice speed area
none if GetAllParameters set dir
file tail pwd Used to differentiate
commands S "BEEdir" E
"BWRCSYNOPSYS" R "dc_shell_license" T vrt
synt.script effort dir I SYSGEN/chip_bugs_fi
xed.vhd O SYN/chip.v indir ENC E
"BWRCENC" R "fe_license" T vov
vov_fe_run.sh dir I ../SYN/chip.v O
chip_place.v .
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Custom Report