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10. Optimization
This section deals with optimization options provided by the compiler.
vcomp is an optimizing compiler - it automatically does many traditional
compiler optimizations by default (constant folding, CSE, code scheduling,
etc etc) as well as a number of Verilog® specific ones to do with
reducing the number of events and keeping wires vectored where possible.
However it is also capable of performing many optimizations that may
change the model you are simulating in simple, or more difficult
ways - most of these optimizations can be disabled selectively.
The compiler flag '-O<n>' enables these optimizations <n>
is a small integer, and if omitted is assumed to be '2'.
These optimizations come in two main flavors - ones that change the structure
of simulation, and those that change the results of the simulation:
10.1 Structure changing optimizations
These classes of optimizations are enabled with '-O2' or just plain '-O'.
By 'change the structure' of a simulation we mean that PLI
routines would see a different structure - wires might be reported
as regs, temporary variables might evaporate completely, modules
may act as macromodules and be absorbed into the module that instantiates
them - however the simulation itself should behave exactly the same way
as if the optimization flag was not given.
Optimizations are named by the compile-time flags that disable them - when
enabled with a -O2 flag the following optimizations are turned on,
if the disabling flag follows the -O on the command line then
that particular optimization is disabled:
- -keep_wires - when enabled some wires are converted into
registers and assign statements to them become
always statements with register assignments
- -no_merge_nets - when a net is simply assigned from another
net and the assign is the only driver this
optimization merges the two nets into the
same object
- -keep_gates - when enabled this optimization sometimes converts gates
into always statements (they are no longer visible
to PLI routines) and potentially merges those always statements
together (note that disabling -keep_wires will usually
negate any possibility of merging gates)
- -keep_primitives - when enabled this optimization sometimes converts primitive instances
into always statements and potentially merges those with other always statements
10.2 Behavior changing optimizations
This class of optimizations change the behavior of the simulation in a manner that
may be tolerable to you - please read the list below carefully before you enable
these with '-O4':
- -keep_bufs - when enabled this optimization causes bufs with one output and one input
that are driven by simple nets and drive simple nets to 'evaporate' and the
two nets to be connected together as one - the behavior that changes is that a
buf will pass a 1'bz input as 1'bx while the combined nets will pass the 1'bz
unchanged.
10.3 Some notes on optimizations
For large designs it's worth experimenting with which optimizations
you are using - don't assume that each individual optimzation will always
make you simulation run faster - we've seen some counterintuitive
results from simulations - especially with optimizations that remove nets
- some nets can act as 'low pass filters' to 0-time glitches resulting in
less rather then more event processing.
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