AMD SimNow Simulator 4.4.5 - Manual (Page 29)

AMD Confidential
User Manual November 21
st
, 2008
Chapter 3: Graphical User Interface 17
Archive Data or Device State: A known device group has archive data for its child
devices, which specifies the default and initial state for when a known device group is
instantiated as a created device. A known device library also has default and initial state
for when it is instantiated as a created device. When a BSD is saved, each device's current
state (archive data) (which may be different than the original known device's archive
data) is saved to the “*.bsd” file.
Internal Connection: A connection between two children of a device group
External Connection: A connection between a device's parent group and a sibling of the
parent group. Under-the-hood, a connection to a device group is routed to one of its
children, via an internal-to-external port mapping between the child device's port and the
parent device's port.
3.3.2 Concept Diagrams
A device group is a device with its own identity (name, description, icon, help file, etc).
But it is also like a BSD; in fact, every BSD has a single created device group called the
Machine device. Tthe default user‟s view into SimNow is from the context of looking
inside the Machine device. This encapsulation of devices inside device group‟s results in
a hierarchy tree, with a Machine device group as the root node. In this way, a device
group tree is like a folder/directory tree (folder is to device group as file is to device
library), as demonstrated in Figure 3-6.
Figure 3-6: Device group: BSD with one machine group and three child devices
Any device can also connect to its sibling devices (Figure 3-6 does not depict any port
connections). Figure 3-7 depicts the same example device tree, but with a different
conceptual view - devices are inside groups; arrows represent possible port connections
between sibling devices:
Machine
Group Group
Group Library
Library
Library Library Library
Library