The PSF and PSFXL file structure

When Cadence Spectre performs a simulation, it writes all simulation results to a directory. This directory can be opened for exploring the simulation results. By default these files are in PSF or PSFXL format. Here we will give a short overview on the PSF and PSFXL file structure. The most…

Continue reading

Analog Regression Testing

Analog regression testing is an essential part of analog design verification. Regression test are used to validate analog behavioral models. They also make sure that a previouslytested analog block still performs as expected after a change. Once analog regression tests have been set up, they can also facilitate other tasks:…

Continue reading

Reading PSF files from Python

Our waveform parser makes reading PSF files from Python easy. For this purpose we have extended our parser library to a self-contained Python module. This module is implemented as a C/C++ extension to Python. As a consequence you get the full performance of a C/C++ library and the ease of…

Continue reading

FSDB Files

Many digital or analog simlators generate FSDB files. FSDB stands for “Fast Signal Data Base”. NOVAS developed this file format to replace VCD (value change dump) files. After a number of acquisitions Synopsys Inc owns FSDB. FSDB files are binary and they make use of data compression. As a consequence…

Continue reading

PSFXL Parser

PSFXL files are mainly generated by the Cadence Spectre simulator. The format is an extension of the PSF file format. It allows higher read/write speeds. Therefore Spectre generates PSFXL files for transient simulations. In addition to the data files Spectre writes a “logFile” which lists all files containing simulation data….

Continue reading

PSF Parser

PSF (Parameter Storage Format) files are mainly created by the Cadence Spectre simulator. Spectre stores it’s output data either in single or double precision binary or in a human-readable ascii format. Many other simulators also support the PSF file format. The Virtuoso design framework uses this format extensively. Some inconveniences…

Continue reading

Waveform Parser Extensions

The BeSpice Waveform Parser can be extended over a plug-in API. This allows to extend the parser to file formats that are not supported natively. Every shared library that implements the plug-in API can be linked at runtime to extend the waveform parser. As BeSpice Wave is based on theĀ …

Continue reading