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Forum: FPGA, VHDL & Verilog Multi-core simulation in Modelsim


von Dima U. (ustinoff)


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Hello everyone.

Imagine i have multi-core CPU (2 or 4, nevermind). Can i use all cores 
to accelerate a simulation in Modelsim?

von Strubi (Guest)


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Last time I checked none of the usual suspects managed to do multi core 
processing of a HDL simulation. This is due to the 'nature law' of event 
driven simulation architectures.
What I tried to speed up verification processes is to split several 
simulations into different/distributed threads and let them talk over 
sockets (co-simulation). This is not trivial though and requires some 
coding work.

von Marcus H. (mharnisch)


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I am afraid that EDA vendors see little value in multithreading the 
simulator kernel (as opposed to, e.g. having separate GUI or logging 
threads, which is being done).

Not only does multithreading cause synchronization overhead between 
threads, it also raises questions regarding clever partitioning and 
reproducability (no changes in behavior between two executions of the 
same simulation, even on different machines).

Typical projects the size where it is actually worth your while thinking 
about potential advantages of multithreading come with many testcases, 
so that you will get a chance using all your cores at once by running a 
number of simulations in parallel.

: Edited by User
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