Chipscope 9.1: Any easy way to rename and regroup signals?

Take a look at .cdc files (they are importd or exported from Chipscope) They contain a list of signals and aliases that you may create/edit with a text editor. Thus, you may maintain your signal list with a text editor and import it after connecting the CipScope analyzer

You shoulld create some intermediate signal that translates your FSM states into some binary code you may read with the ChipScope. I never found any other way, but this one works nice.

Zara

Hi Zara,

Thank you for your input. It helps a lot.

Have a nice day,

Sics

But how do you name busses? Naming signals is easy...

Actually, to solve the problem mentioned above, before closing chipscope Analyzer save your settings it will be a .cpj extension file then when you download your new configuration file open that cpj file that you had saved.

Sics

Yeah, but what a dog's breakfast that file is. If you delete busses, they persist forever in the file but with zero size.

I'm convinced that whoever wrote chipscope never uses it on a proper heirachical design. The viewer needs to have the signal name window justified to the right, otherwise I just see the pathname of the signal I'm trying to look at. (It's not rocket science, just look at how ModelSIM does it) Come to think of it, perhaps the GUI guy comes from a place where they write from right to left? So, you can rename the signals to something shorter with either an editor on the cpj file or a lot of right-clicks. But add another bunch of signals and re-import the cdc file: all the edits disappear. Way to go, GUI writer guy. The chipscope could be so much better, with a little forethought and effort. It should be a crime to take such a good idea and hobble it like that. The underlying engine is pretty good. (But it needs a clock enable input for the clock. That would probably double it's useful frequency range)

Cheers, Syms.

No, it's a pain.. As Symon as pointed out, there's a bunch of flaws in the Chipscope UI.. It's only if I have to that I ever use Chipscope.

Ditto. An interface done right. You can add extra signals from the waveform window and then have it recompile and get on with it. No faffing around in another separate tool. Why should I care about the chipscope core inserter? Just give me some waveforms. Grrr. Sorry, I'll stop ranting now :-)

Maybe if we *all* shout loudly enough about chipscope it'll get sorted.

Or Xilinx could open the protocol and at least we could write our own front end that would work properly....

Cheers, Martin

When adding new signals to a Chipscope project, I try to add them at the end to avoid screwing up the project. That way you can simply import your new .cdc file into your Chipscope Analyzer project and all the previous signals will stay intact (and the new signals will appear). Avoid inserting new signals by moving other signal positions around, as this will screw up the project.

In order to help you setting up the Chipscope Analyzer project, take a look at csptool:

It's a little Perl script that regroups buses for you. Might be overkill if you have a few buses, but if you have tens, it can be very handy.

You can look at the synthesis report to see how XST encoded the states. Then I suggest that you create a .tok file to display the name of the state in the waveform window. Look at \ChipScope_Pro_9_1i\bin\nt \token\token_sample.tok for an example.

Patrick

Hi Patrick, So I'm still using 8.2, and this isn't the behaviour I see. An import overwrites any previous edits. Is this a new feature for 9.1?

I downloaded it, sounds interesting, many thanks.

All the best, Syms.

I have been using Chipscope since v7 and I think that it's always been like that. After you load a new bit file, disconnect and reconnect the JTAG (JTAG chain menu). Chipscope will then discover that the number of signals changed and a dialog will pop-up asking if you want to preserve signals names (choose yes). Then you will see new unnamed signals in your signals list (they won't be in the waveform). Now you can simply import the new cdc file to retreive the name of these new signals. The rest of the Analyzer design should stay intact.

Cheers, Patrick

Hi Patrick, So, I followed your instructions, but at the point where I import the new cdc file, the signal names _ALL_ revert to the names in the design, even ones I have renamed. The triggers and busses do remain unchanged, but signals that have been renamed revert their names. Arse! This is with 8.2. Cheers, Syms.

Oh, I had misunderstood your problem. Yes the signals names will revert to the ones in the cdc file... What is kept is things like colors, buses you created, triggers... But not the names, sorry about the confusion! I never ran into that problem because I don't change the names of the signals. Yet one more simply feature that the Chipscope GUI should have...

If you really need that feature, you could try to modify the csptool script to create a "custom cdc import" feature. That would be fairly involved however because csptool can only parse .cpj files, not .cdc ones.

Alternatively, you could try to modify the cdc file to only keep the new signals, and then import this partial cdc file. If you're lucky it will work...

Patrick

Hi Patrick, Thanks for your reply, I'm glad that we see the same behaviour. I thought I was missing out on something!

Actually, this might not be too bad, the cdc file is pretty obvious, and it would be easy to remove the 'pathname' of the instance with a perl script. Even though it wouldn't keep renamed signals, at least I could reduce the length of the names to something more manageable. If I get around to bashing one out, I'll post it. Thanks again, Syms.

Hi Patrick, How do I download your script source code?

At csptool:

Thank you.

Weng

Alternatively, I made an executable available (long overdue):

Thanks for your interest

Patrick.