Answers Database

Converting pre-Unified library schematic designs to Unified libraries


Record #2935

Problem Title:
Converting pre-Unified library schematic designs to Unified libraries


Problem Description:
Keywords: convert, pre-Unified, Unified, altran

Urgency: standard

General Description:
Is there an easy, automated way of converting pre-Unified
library schematic designs to Unified libraries?


Solution 1:

There is no automated way of doing a comprehensive conversion
on most platforms (the exception being the Viewlogic
interface--see (Xilinx Solution 2947) because:

1. The macros and primitives are named differently in the two
libraries.  Different primitives are used in the Unified and
pre-Unified libraries (FDC is the primitive for a resettable
flip-flop with clock enable in the pre-Unified Library,
while its counterpart in the Unified Library is called an
FDCE, for example).

You would need to have some kind of mapping file to tell the
translation utility which pre-Unified component to replace
with what Unified component.

However, even if you had that:

2. The names of pins on symbols in the pre-Unified Libraries
would not match up for many of the symbols in the two
libraries.

3. The sizes and shapes of the macros in the two libraries,
as well as the actual positioning of the symbol pins on
the symbols themselves are different, so many of the
buses and nets in a converted design would no longer be connected
when the symbols from the pre-Unified Library
were replaced with symbols from the Unified Library.

The only other method that might be less painful if a
large number of designs need to be converted would be to
build a "shadow library"--basically a library of pre-Unified
style symbols whose underpinnings are built out of Unified
library symbols.



End of Record #2935