Zooming to critical paths, Printing critical path details, Using critical path diagrams – Achronix ACE Version 5.0 User Manual

Page 286: 4 zooming to critical paths, 5 printing critical path details, 6 using critical path diagrams

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Analyzing Critical Paths

Chapter 4. Tasks

The nets are now added to the selection in the

Selection view

and are shown with the selection color in the

Floorplanner view

.

Zooming to Critical Paths

To zoom the

Floorplanner view

to a critical path’s region:

1. In the

Critical Paths view

, click on the table row containing the desired critical path data.

2. To zoom to the path in the

Floorplanner view

, click on the Zoom to Path toolbar button (

) on the

Critical Paths view

toolbar.

Note:

This action only applies to routed designs.

Printing Critical Path Details

To print the details of a critical path to the

Tcl Console view

:

1. In the

Critical Paths view

, click on the table row containing data for the desired path to print details

for.

2. To print the details text, click on the Print Path Details toolbar button (

) on the

Critical Paths view

toolbar.

Tip:

Critical path details are also available in the

timing report

.

Using Critical Path Diagrams

The

Critical Path Diagram view

provides a graphical representation of a single critical path; these paths are

each selected from the table in the

Critical Paths view

. The graphical representations will consist of circular

nodes (representing instances) connected by arrows (representing one or more nets).

Note:

The pipeline stages (sometimes simply called ”stages”) mentioned in this section only
pertain to asynchronous designs. Synchronous designs will never display stages.

Tip:

To quickly look at the diagrams for all the critical paths, make sure both the

Critical Paths

view

and

Critical Path Diagram view

are visible. Then click on a row in the

Critical Paths

view

’s table. Now use the keyboard Up and Down arrow keys to change which row is

selected in the table - the

Critical Path Diagram view

’s diagram will be updated to graph the

relevant critical path.

Graph Elements

The graphical diagram is made up of Nodes and Arrows. The information represented by the Nodes and
Arrows (and their supporting text) can vary depending upon the current settings in the

fly-out palette

.

Nodes

Primary graph nodes (the larger circles in the diagram) represent the key instances or Turn Points

on the critical path. Intermediate nodes (when enabled) are smaller circles, representing instances the data
passes through while flowing between Turn Points. Several useful pieces of information are available for
each graph node; these may be enabled and disabled via the

fly-out palette

. Note that some information will

be hidden when the graph node (circle) is too small to contain it; to see all enabled information, the diagram
will have to be zoomed in. Configurable tooltips can be used to see information that would otherwise be

UG001 Rev. 5.0 - 5th December 2012

http://www.achronix.com

274

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