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weelo

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Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10.
Mar 14^th, 2007, 6:05pm

I am trying out Spectre 6.1, and I have noticed that it starts up very slowly
compared to Spectre 5.10.41_USR4, which I was previously using. I set up
a small test in which I run both versions of Spectre from the command line
on the same input deck.

Setup: 3.8GHz P4, 4G RAM, 15k scsi drive, all tools loaded locally from this
drive, all results written locally to this drive

==============================
mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> /appmt/cadence_5141_usr4/tools/spectre/bin/32bit/spectre -version
@(#)$CDS: spectre version 5.1.0 08/11/2006 05:13 (intelibm18.Cadence.COM) $

mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> /appmt/cadence_5141_usr4/tools/spectre/bin/32bit/spectre -raw ./tmp c.scs

Aggregate audit (5:58:11 PM, Wed Mar 14, 2007):
Time used: CPU = 13.8 s, elapsed = 14 s, util. = 98.9%.
Virtual memory used = 4.25 Mbytes.
spectre completes with 0 errors, 103 warnings, and 6 notices.
==============================

==============================
mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /appmt/mmsim61/tools/lib

mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> /appmt/mmsim61/tools/spectre/bin/32bit/spectre -version
@(#)$CDS: spectre version 6.1.0 05/26/2006 17:57 (usimlx109) $

mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> /appmt/mmsim61/tools/bin/spectre -raw ./tmp c.scs

Aggregate audit (5:51:28 PM, Wed Mar 14, 2007):
Time used: CPU = 14.4 s, elapsed = 25 s, util. = 57.4%.
Time spent in licensing: elapsed = 350 ms.
Virtual memory used = 6.24 Mbytes.
spectre completes with 0 errors, 161 warnings, and 6 notices.
==============================

You can see that the CPU time is about the same in both cases, 14 sec,
but the elapsed time is much longer with spectre 6.1.0.
I also notice that with spectre 5.1.0, the simulation starts as soon
as I hit RETURN. However, with Spectre 6.1.0, it takes several seconds
before anything starts to happen.

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this slowness when migrating
to Spectre 6.1.

Thanks.

Adrian

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Andrew Beckett

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Posts: 1742
Bracknell, UK

Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10.
Reply #1 - Mar 15^th, 2007, 6:30am

Do you have veriloga models or devices modeled with spectre's "bsource" component in what you're simulating? If so, spectre will compile these to C and then use gcc to compile them, and then link them in using a shared library. This takes some time the first time around - but is quicker on subsequent runs.

You can turn that off by using the command line switches -ac 0 -bc 0 or by setting the $CDS_AHDLCMI_ENABLE UNIX environment variable to NO.

Does that help?

Regards,

Andrew.

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Geoffrey_Coram

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Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10.
Reply #2 - Mar 15^th, 2007, 9:04am

Andrew Beckett wrote on Mar 15^th, 2007, 6:30am:

You can turn that off by using the command line switches -ac 0 -bc 0 or by setting the $CDS_AHDLCMI_ENABLE UNIX environment variable to NO.

It might be useful to determine if this is the cause, but I certainly wouldn't want anyone to think that disabling compilation is a good idea in general ... the interpreted versions will run much slower.

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weelo

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Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10.
Reply #3 - Mar 15^th, 2007, 2:07pm

Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, it did not speed up
the simulation using version 6.1.0. In fact, I tried with all of
the various switches like -log, -warn, -debug, etc, but nothing
made any dent in the excess simulation time using v6.1.0.

==============================
mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> /appmt/mmsim61/tools/spectre/bin/spectre -version
@(#)$CDS: spectre version 6.1.0 05/26/2006 17:57 (usimlx109) $

mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> /appmt/mmsim61/tools/spectre/bin/spectre -ac 0 -bc 0 -raw ./tmp c.scs

Aggregate audit (1:58:43 PM, Thur Mar 15, 2007):
Time used: CPU = 14.4 s, elapsed = 27 s, util. = 53.2%.
Time spent in licensing: elapsed = 390 ms.
Virtual memory used = 6.24 Mbytes.
spectre completes with 0 errors, 161 warnings, and 6 notices.
==============================

==============================
mx1:~/projects/bawang/bawang_a0> /appmt/cadence_5141_usr4/tools/spectre/bin/32bit/spectre -raw ./tmp c.scs

Aggregate audit (2:03:54 PM, Thur Mar 15, 2007):
Time used: CPU = 14.2 s, elapsed = 15 s, util. = 94.7%.
Virtual memory used = 4.25 Mbytes.
spectre completes with 0 errors, 103 warnings, and 6 notices.
==============================

Adrian

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Ken Kundert Global Moderator Offline Posts: 2386 Silicon Valley	Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10. Reply #4 - Mar 15^th, 2007, 2:59pm I suggest you take a close look at the licensing and license manager. I seem to remember that there was some change in the license manager in that time frame. It may be causing something to hang and you are being forced to wait through a timeout. -Ken
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Andrew Beckett

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Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10.
Reply #5 - Mar 15^th, 2007, 4:15pm

Both Geoffrey's and Ken's points are good. I agree with Geoffrey - my suggestion was primarily to do with determining the cause. Of course, if the simulation is
very short, the overhead of model compilation may not be worthwhile - which is what I was trying to suggest.

For licensing, do you have $LM_LICENSE_FILE set as well as $CDS_LIC_FILE? You might want to try checking whether these are only pointing at license servers which exist, and you might also want to try unsetting LM_LICENSE_FILE. If you can't do that because other tools need it, try

Code:

setenv CDS_LIC_ONLY TRUE

Regards,

Andrew.

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Geoffrey_Coram Senior Fellow Offline Posts: 1999 Massachusetts, USA	Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10. Reply #6 - Mar 16^th, 2007, 4:34am Ken - An interesting hypothesis, but did you see this: weelo wrote on Mar 15^th, 2007, 2:07pm: Time spent in licensing: elapsed = 390 ms. I would expect that this statistic would include any network timeouts during the licensing.
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Ken Kundert Global Moderator Offline Posts: 2386 Silicon Valley	Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10. Reply #7 - Mar 16^th, 2007, 9:24am No, I missed that. That would seem to suggest that the problem is not due to the licensing. -Ken
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mohta Junior Member Offline Posts: 13	Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10. Reply #8 - Mar 16^th, 2007, 12:33pm I am running Spectre 6.1.1.317 and also see slow startup times compared to Spectre 6.0 - no idea why.
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weelo

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Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10.
Reply #9 - Mar 16^th, 2007, 3:30pm

Based on Ken's suggestion to look at licensing, I looked at the LM_DAEMON.log
file more closely. It does appear to be related to license startup time,
which is not accurately reported in the actual aggregate audit output.

Under Spectre v6.1.0, the log shows:
==============================
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152 spectre_root): Initialization started (10.10-s007)...
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152): Creating a new job ...
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152): Configuration of license path is '5280@keys05:5280@keys07:5280@keys06:5280@keys04'.
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152): Configuration of recheck interval mimimum is 50.
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152): Configuration of 2000000000 maximum retry calls.
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152): Configuration of sleep time value of 0.
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152): Configuration of display specification is 'sj131lx:0.0'.
3/16/2007 14:35:34 (125152): Storage of server list started...

......

3/16/2007 14:35:38 (125152): Feature Virtuoso_Spectre 6.100 matched with license file line
'6.1 25-mar-2007 9 xxxxxx J PERM'.
3/16/2007 14:35:38 (125152): Checking out 1 license(s) for Virtuoso_Spectre 6.100 (type J [4000])...
3/16/2007 14:35:44 (125152): Storage of server list started...
3/16/2007 14:35:44 (125152): Server list saved with status 0 (time 0).
3/16/2007 14:35:44 (125152): (Checked out from file '5280@keys05',
line '6.1 25-mar-2007 9 xxxxxx J PERM')
3/16/2007 14:35:44 (125152): Check-out completed with status 0 (time 10).

......

3/16/2007 14:35:59 (125152): Exit completed with status 0 (time 0).
==============================

Under Spectre v5.1.0, the log shows:
==============================
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651 spectre_root): Initialization started (10.10-s007)...
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Creating a new job ...
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Configuration of license path is '5280@keys05:5280@keys07:5280@keys06:5280@keys04'.
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Configuration of recheck interval mimimum is 50.
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Configuration of 2000000000 maximum retry calls.
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Configuration of sleep time value of 0.
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Configuration of display specification is 'sj131lx:0.0'.
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Storage of server list started...
3/16/2007 14:38:00 (419651): Server list saved with status 0 (time 0).

......

3/16/2007 14:38:01 (419651): Feature 32500 5.100 matched with license file line
'6.1 25-mar-2007 11 xxxxxx UHD PERM'.
3/16/2007 14:38:01 (419651): Checking out 1 license(s) for 32500 5.100 (type UHD [7])...

......

3/16/2007 14:38:15 (419651): Exit completed with status 0 (time 0).
==============================

It appears to take an extra 10 seconds just to get the spectre 6.1 license
checked out. This corresponds to the extra 10 seconds that my simulation
under v6.1 requires.

I still don't know if this is normal behavior for v6.1 licensing or there
is something broken with our setup.

Adrian

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Andrew Beckett Senior Fellow Offline Life, don't talk to me about Life... Posts: 1742 Bracknell, UK	Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10. Reply #10 - Mar 17^th, 2007, 2:08pm Did you check what I suggested about your LM_LICENSE_FILE and CDS_LIC_FILE vars, as well as trying CDS_LIC_ONLY? Andrew.
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weelo

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Re: Slow startup in Spectre 6.1.0 vs Spectre 5.10.
Reply #11 - Mar 19^th, 2007, 7:14pm

Thank you all for your help.

Andrew, yes I made sure that LM_LICENSE_FILE was not set,
CDS_LIC_FILE was set to existing key servers, and CDS_LIC_ONLY = 1.

These changes did not improve the startup speed until I
truncated the list of key servers from 4 servers down to just one.

For some reason, this allows spectre 6.1 to start much more quickly than
before (1 or 2 second delay compared to 10 second delay).

This problem is solved for now.

Thank you again everyone.

Adrian

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