Getting started with Mentor

Getting started with Mentor

1.  Acknowledgements

This file is based on a previous text written by Ashish Thusoo (for CS552 Fall '97), Phil Atkinson (for CS552 Fall '96 and Spring '97), Avinash Sodani (for CS552 Fall '95 and Spring '96), Andreas Moshovos (for CS552 Spring '94), Subbarao Palacharla (for ECE552 Fall '94), Todd Bezenek (for CS552, Spring '98, Fall '98, and Spring '99), Raghav Kaushik (for Fall '99), Sony Pham, Bhavesh Mehta (Fall '03), Saurabh Goyal (for CS552 Fall '04), Andy Phelps (for CS552 '05), and Derek Hower (for CS552 '06).

2.  Introduction

The Mentor Graphics system is a complete, integrated package for digital system design, simulation and IC layout. In addition, it has a variety of tools related to Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design and analysis. For purposes of CS552, we are interested in the schematic capture and simulation of digital circuits capabilities of Mentor. The main component of this system we are going to use is ModelSim.

The current version of Mentor Graphics is supported on Intel/linux(RedHat 9 and later releases) and SPARC/Solaris 8 (and later releases).

3.  Setting up your environment

These environment setup commands are for CS machines only and will not work on CAE machines.

Put the following at the end of your .bashrc (or .bashrc.local) file in your home directory:

Note: In your home directory, you can use gvim .bashrc command to edit it.

export MGC_HOME=/s/mentor/MGC_HOME-2004
export SDD_ROOT=/s/mentor
export SDD_HOME=/s/mentor/2004
export ADK=/s/mentor/adk
export MGC_WD=$HOME/mentor
export MGC_LOCATION_MAP=$HOME/mentor/.location
export MGLS_LICENSE_FILE=/s/mentor/etc/cust/mgls/mgc.licenses
export PATH=$PATH:/s/mentor/bin:/s/mentor/MGC_HOME-2004/bin:/s/mentor/adk/bin:/u/k/a/karu/courses/cs552/spring2013/handouts/bins

Now type the following to your shell (start in your home directory):

% mkdir mentor
% cd mentor
% cp /u/k/a/karu/courses/cs552/spring2013/downloads/.location .location

Edit your .location file and replace the last line with the path to your mentor directory. Mentor applications use the .location file (called location map ) to determine the location in the file system of the libraries they may need.

Note: You might require to open a new terminal to reflect the changes that you had just done. Now, vsim command should open the ModelSim verilog simulator.