Verific data structure

Q: What are the data structures in Verific?

There are 2 data structures in Verific: parsetree and netlist database.

1. The parsetree is just another representation of the design. It contains the exact information as in the RTL files, only in a machine-readable format. Because each language (Verilog or VHDL) has its own constructs, each language has its own parsetree.

The parsetree is the result of veri_file::Analyze()/vhdl_file::Ananlyze().

The design parsetree can be "statically elaborated." These are some of the operations during static elaboration process:

- Unrolling "generate" loops. - Evaluating constant expressions. - Uniquifying instances of parameterized modules/entities.

The result of static elaboration is a modified parsetree.

The parsetree supports all constructs of the language.

2. The synthesizable subset of the parsetree can go through "RTL elaboration" (or "synthesis"). The result is the "netlist database," consisting of "hardware" components: libraries, cells, netlists, nets, ports, instances, operators (adders, muxes, ...), and primitives (ands, ors, xors, ...). The netlist database is language-independent. The contents of the netlist database can be written out in various structural languages: Verilog, VHDL, EDIF, BLIF. In general, the output netlist from the netlist database does not look anything like the RTL input files.

The netlist database is the result of veri_file::Elaborate()/vhdl_file::Elaborate() API (after veri_file::Analyze()/vhdl_file::Analyze()).

RTL elaboration supports the synthesizable subset of the language.

Note that during RTL elaboration, Verific software creates a netlist directly from the parse tree. It does not build a control and data flow graph (CDFG). If an application needs a CDFG, it will have to define the graph structure and use Verific parse tree traversal routines to build the graph.