The Synopsys HDL simulation/synthesis tools are available to UBC through an agreement between the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation and Synopsys.

User Configuration

The Synopsys tools are installed in

 /usr/applic/synopsys

In order to use the tools, you must add the following lines to your

    .cshrc.local     # for Sun Os 4.x
or  .cshrc.solaris   # for solaris (Sun Os 5.x).

file:

  set synpath = `echo $PATH | grep synopsys`
  if ( $synpath == "" && -r /usr/common/Cshrc.synopsys ) then
    source /usr/common/Cshrc.synopsys
  endif
  unset synpath

Note: If you are copying this section from the web page, the first line has command: `echo $PATH | grep synopsys`.  The single quote (`) is different from (').   The first one tells the shell to execute the command, the second one starts or ends a string.  You can find the first single quote on the right most key of the top row on your keyboard. Use that to execute a command in shell (like the above example).

In addition to the changes to your .cshrc.local and .cshrc.solaris file, Synopsys requires various startup files, the names of which depend on which of the Synopsys tools (synthesis, simulation) you will be using. For the design_analyzer tool, used for synthesis, a file called

    .synopsys_dc.setup

is required. The contents of this file are technology dependant. Versions of this file are available in

    /usr/applic/synopsys/cmc/bicmos/dotfiles

if you will be using the BICMOS V2.0 process from NT. There are two files in this directory:

kcell.synopsys_dc.setup   and   tcell.synopsys_dc.setup

Each one of the above files target an specific set of library cells for the synthesis tools. Read the README file in the above directory. Copy the appropriate version to your design directory, renamed to .synopsys_dc.setup. Generally, you should not copy this file to your home directory, since this can interfere with certain other tools (notable the Cadence "Cadence to Synopsys Interface").

Synopsys Documentation

All of the Synopsys documentation is available online. After your account has been configured as described above, the documentation is available through the command:

    synopsysdoc

or through the various help buttons inside the various Synopsys tools.