[ANN] Ruby-VPI 0.7

[Suraj N. Kurapati]

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Ruby-VPI is a Ruby interface to Verilog VPI. It lets you create
complex Verilog test benches easily and wholly in Ruby.

Website: http://ruby-vpi.rubyforge.org

Download: http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1339&release_id=6154

SVN tag: svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ruby-vpi/tags/0.7


= Version 0.7 (2006-07-22)

== Summary

This release enhances the VPI utility layer and adds new content to
the user manual.

== Details

* SWIG is no longer required for users because its output is
included in the release package.

* The VPI utility layer provides access to VPI properties of handles
in a {simpler, more powerful
way}[http://ruby-vpi.rubyforge.org/doc/manual.html#organization.vpi.util].

* All VPI properties, except delay values, are now accessible from
a handle.

* The <tt>handle.value</tt> and <tt>handle.value=</tt> methods
have been removed.

* The user manual has been revised and new content in the
organization and usage sections has been added.

* This release was tested and developed using:
* Ruby 1.8.4 and Icarus Verilog 0.8 on i686 GNU/Linux
* Ruby 1.8.4 and Mentor Modelsim 6.1d on x86_64 GNU/Linux

== Acknowledgment

* Thanks to Jan Decaluwe for correcting the description of MyHDL in
the user manual.
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[Phil Tomson]

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Ruby-VPI is a Ruby interface to Verilog VPI. It lets you create
complex Verilog test benches easily and wholly in Ruby.

Website: http://ruby-vpi.rubyforge.org

Download: http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1339&release_id=6154

SVN tag: svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/ruby-vpi/tags/0.7

It's great to see more EDA tools based on Ruby and it looks like
you've put a lot of work into this.

One nitpick: The link to RHDL in your user's guide should be updated
to point to:
http://rhdl.rubyforge.org/

Also, I'm not sure if RHDL is an 'alternative'. In fact I wonder if
it might be possible to use RubyVPI and RHDL together sort of as a
distributed simulator where part of your code is simulating in the
Verilog simulator and part is simulating in RHDL?

BTW: I believe there is some support for VPI in the ghdl vhdl simulator (
http://ghdl.free.fr ) so RubyVPI may be usable with ghdl.

Phil

 

[Suraj N. Kurapati]

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It's great to see more EDA tools based on Ruby and it looks like
you've put a lot of work into this.

Thanks for the encouragement.

One nitpick: The link to RHDL in your user's guide should be
updated to point to: http://rhdl.rubyforge.org/

Also, I'm not sure if RHDL is an 'alternative'.
Fixed.

In fact I wonder if it might be possible to use RubyVPI and RHDL
together sort of as a distributed simulator where part of your
code is simulating in the Verilog simulator and part is
simulating in RHDL?

Interesting, it should be possible. I see three possible scenarios:

1. RHDL communicates with a Verilog simulator through Ruby-VPI. This
would simply add VPI capabilities to RHDL's verification framework.

2. Ruby-VPI communicates with RHDL (acting as a Verilog simulator).
This would make it necessary for RHDL to implement the vpi_user.h
interface in C/Ruby (probably not what you intended .

3. Ruby-VPI acts a bridge between two simulations that are running
in parallel: one in RHDL and another in a Verilog simulator. This
could be useful when you need to verify the behavior of an RHDL
module against one implemented in Verilog.

For example, say you have synthesizable RTL source code for an
existing mircoprocessor that implements the SPARC v8 ISA, and you're
writing your own microprocessor in RHDL which also implements the
SPARC v8 ISA.

Now comes the challenge: you'd like to verify that your
microprocessor correctly implements the ISA. One approach is to feed
the same input to your RHDL microprocessor and the Verilog one, and
then verify that they both generate the same output or exhibit the
same behavior.

BTW: I believe there is some support for VPI in the ghdl vhdl
simulator ( http://ghdl.free.fr ) so RubyVPI may be usable with
ghdl.

Thanks for the tip. I wouldn't have guessed a VHDL simulator has VPI
capabilities! I should try adding VHPI capabilites for my project,
in the future.
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