[Question] Is WAL able to load Synopsys .vpd files?

[WezelA]

I am playing around with the tool and wanted to do some analysis of my simulations of the BOOM core.
I simulated the core using Chipyard and Synopsys VCS and get the according vpd files, which I can't load into WAL (throwing following error message)

'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xd5 in position 21: invalid continuation byte

It is possible to convert it to a vcd file by using vpd2vcd but since it is less compressed the vcd files become really large(e.g. 27 MB converted to 2.2 GB)

Is there a possibility to use vpd files without converting to vcd?

Best regards,
Alex

[LucasKl]

Hi Alex,

at the moment .vpd files are not supported.
However, later today I will be releasing a new version of WAL which will support the .fst file format. Like .vpd, .fst is compressed and does not suffer from the memory explosion problem.
Is it possible for you to convert to .fst?

Anyways, we will look into the .vpd format and try to add support to WAL soon.

Regards
Lucas

[LucasKl]

We just checked and you should be able to convert your .vpd to .fst using gtkwaves "vcd2fst" converter.
`...
VCD2FST(1) Filetype Conversion VCD2FST(1)

NAME
vcd2fst - Converts VCD files to FST files

SYNTAX
vcd2fst [option]... [VCDFILE] [FSTFILE]

DESCRIPTION
Converts VCD files to FST files.

OPTIONS
-v,--vcdname
Specify VCD/FSDB/VPD/WLF input filename. Processing of filetypes other than VCD requires that the appropriate 2vcd converter was found during ./configure.
...
`

[WezelA]

Hi Lucas,

thank you for your fast answer.

I will try to convert my vpd files to the fst format and let you know if it worked out.

Best regards,
Alex

[LucasKl]

Hi Alex,
there is now a new pre-release version of WAL with fst support available.
Please check out the "v0.6.3-beta.1" tag to get this version.
Fst files can be loaded just like vcds with the load function, e.g. (load "gcd.fst" t)

Lucas

[WezelA]

Hi Lucas,

I checked out the new version and I'm able to load fst files in WAL.

I can generate the fst files using the converter from gtkwave, but unfortunately I have to first convert from vpd to vcd and then from vcd to fst. When I try to immediately convert from vpd to fst e.g. with
vcd2fst towers.vpd towers.fst
an fst file is generated but it is just 409 bytes (no matter which trace I try to convert) and it throws a segmentation fault when trying to load it with WAL

I think WAL is quite powerful and it would be awesome if you support vpd files at some point :)

Best regards,
Alex