3.4. Cadence Joules RTL Power Tool Plugin

3.4.1. Tool Steps

See __init__.py for the implementation of these steps.

init_design
synthesize_design
report_power

A variety of different output reports may be generated with this tool. Within the Hammer default configs file, the power.inputs.report_configs struct description contains a summary of the different reporting options, specified via the output_formats struct field.

3.4.2. Known Issues

  • Joules supports saving the read stimulus file to the SDB (stimulus database) format via the write_sdb command. However, subsequent reads of this SDB file via the read_sdb command fail for no apparent reason

    • As a result, read_stimulus/compute_power cannot be a separate step in the plugin, because there is no way to save the results of these commands before running the various power reporting commands. Thus these two commands are run as part of the report_power step.

    • NOTE: this might not be a problem anymore with the new Joules version, so we should re-try this!!