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It all started back in 1992. My design group at Ericsson was designing a multiprocessor board using Motorola 88000 microprocessors. We needed some fast glue-logic and decided to use Motorola H4C ASICs (0.7um CMOS) to design this logic. I was responsible for the testlogic design, including the tap controller and the boundary scan implementation and was going to use the Verilog hardware description language (HDL) for the first time. I had been to a Verilog training course and I had learned how to use Verilog-XL. Most of time I was debugging my design blocks using Verilog-XL in interactive mode. All the commands had to be written and executed from the command line. Moving up and down the design hierarchy involved many $scopes and $showscopes commands. To save time and typing I decided to create a graphical user interface (GUI) and put all these commands behind buttons and menus.
At that time all our computer work was done on SUN SPARC machines with the SUN OS 4 operating system. SUN Microsystems was using OPEN LOOK user interface with the XView toolkit and had a graphical interface builder called Devguide. I started to use this tool and could easily design very nice graphical interfaces. At the same time I learned how to program in "C" and then everything fell into place. My first tool was called VeriSmart.
VeriSmart Simulation Workbench
MultiSmart Cosimulation Workbench
One year later we needed support for co-simulation, running up to six simulations at the same time. The communication between the simulations was done using file semaphores. To support this simulation setup I developed MultiSmart.
Cobra Command Center
Back in those old days the only terminal emulator window you had access to was cmdtool or shelltool. I guess xterm was around but I hadn't heard about it. cmdtool and shelltool did not offer anything more than a window to type commands in. The only difference between the two was that cmdtool had a scrolling window. I decided to build my own terminal emulator, Cobra Command Center. I started with a plain cmdtool window and began adding new features.
1. A file tree browser.
2. A menu to support a number of file operations in the file tree.
3. A file list browser.
When there are too many files in a directory a file list browser makes more sense. It also has a filter function that lets you filter out only the files you are interesting in.
4. A command list manager.
The command list manager lets you store all your "always forgot" commands. To execute a command double-click it.
5. Bookmarks
The Bookmark Definition window lets you bookmark any directory, source file, executable file, script file, FrameMaker file and PDF file. When selecting a bookmarked file the appropriate action will be taken. For a directory a cd <bookmark> will be executed.
This is what came out of the remodeling process.
Still today I am using Cobra Command Center for 95% of all the terminal work I do, but now the Linux version.
Mongoose Simulation Environment
During my 15 years as an ASIC designer I was involved in more than 25 ASIC design projects. Every time I had to start from scratch to build a new simulation environment. That struggle gave me the idea to start working on the Mongoose Simulation Environment.
Why using the Mongoose Simulation Environment:
- Save time. Faster setup time. Easier to find files.
- A common interface to all simulators (ModelSim, NCSIM, VCS)
- Full support for both interactive and batch simulations
- Seamless integration of Specman
- Clearcase support for revision control
- LSF batch queue handling
Read more about using Mongoose in the FPGA design from scratch story.
Zebra Verilog Design Explorer
When designing an ASIC using Verilog HDL you will end up with a huge number of Verilog source files stored in many different directories. When debugging the design you need fast access to all these files to make changes and rerun your simulations. Zebra Verilog Design Explorer will make that process a very fast and efficient one. Just open the Design Tree Browser and display the part of the design tree you are interested in. Than simply mark the module you would like to change and load it to the text editor window.
The Zebra Design Tree Browser.
Topi - Top Code Generator
Ever heard of table driven design. That is exactly what Topi is all about. When designing an ASIC with more than 1000 signal pins you need an exact and precise way of adding all the signal names. Topi will help you generate the top testbench, the top instantiation and the ASIC pinlayout in the same tool.
Topi Pin Table Editor
Topi Pin Layout Editor
Porting Unix programs to Linux
Today it is hard to find a SUN SPARC workstation and most of the engineering work is done on Linux based computers or PC. Some years ago I decided to move my Zoo Design Platform to the Linux platform. This was a fairly simple process because all the xview libraries had been converted to Linux.
Porting a Unix program to Mac OS X
As a last step I ported one of the programs to Mac OS X. When Apple moved to Intel based computers it made things much easier. You can read more about this process here.
Download programs
All the programs can be download from www.zoocad.com/zoodesign_download.html.
Summary
By now I think you understand why it is called Zoo Design Platform. Here again are all the "animals" in the Zoo.
| Tool | Description | Introduced | Mac OS X
| Linux
| | VeriSmart | Verilog Simulation Workbench
| 1992 | No
| Yes
| | MultiSmart | Verilog Cosimulation Workbench
| 1993 | No
| Yes | | Cobra | Command Center (Smart Terminal)
| 1995 | Yes | Yes | | Mongoose | Simulation Environment
| 1993 | No
| Yes | | Zebra | Verilog Design Explorer
| 1994 | No
| Yes | Okapi
| VHDL Design Explorer
| 1994
| No
| Yes
| Topi
| Top Code Builder
| 1995
| No
| Yes
|
Welcome to the Zoo!
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