ModelSim SE - High Performance Simulation and Debug

ModelSim SE is our UNIX, Linux, and Windows-based simulation and debug environment, combining high performance with the most powerful and intuitive GUI in the industry.

What's New in ModelSim SE?

Improved FSM debug options including control of basic information, transition table and warning messages. Added support of FSM Multi-state transitions coverage (i.e. coverage for all possible FSM state sequences).
Improved debugging with hyperlinked navigation between objects and their declaration, and between visited source files.
The dataflow window can now compute and display all paths from one net to another.
Enhanced code coverage data management with fine grain control of information in the source window.
Toggle coverage has been enhanced to support SystemVerilog types: structures, packed unions, fixed-size multi-dimensional arrays and real.
Some IEEE VHDL 2008 features are supported including source code encryption.
Added support of new VPI types, including packed arrays of struct nets and variables.

ModelSim SE Features:

Multi-language, high performance simulation engine
Verilog, VHDL, SystemVerilog Design
Code Coverage
SystemVerilog for Design
Integrated debug
JobSpy Regression Monitor
Mixed HDL simulation option
SystemC Option
TCL/tk
Solaris and Linux 32 & 64-bit
Windows 32-bit

ModelSim SE Benefits:

High performance HDL simulation solution for FPGA & ASIC design teams
The best mixed-language environment and performance in the industry
Intuitive GUI for efficient interactive or post-simulation debug of RTL and gate-level designs
Merging, ranking and reporting of code coverage for tracking verification progress
Sign-off support for popular ASIC libraries
All ModelSim products are 100% standards based. This means your investment is protected, risk is lowered, reuse is enabled, and productivity is enhanced
Award-winning technical support

ModelSim SE Overview
ModelSim provides scalable HDL simulation solutions for a broad range of design sizes and complexities.

Leader in Single Kernel, Mixed Language Technology
Mentor Graphics® was the first to combine single kernel simulator (SKS) technology with a unified debug environment for Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHDL, and SystemC. The combination of industry-leading performance and capacity with the best integrated debug and analysis environment make ModelSim the simulator of choice for both ASIC and FPGA design. The best standards and platform support in the industry make it easy to adopt in the majority of process and tool flows.

High-Performance, Scalable Simulation Environment
ModelSim provides seamless, scalable performance and capabilities. Through the use of a single compiler and library system for all ModelSim configurations, employing the right ModelSim configuration for project needs is as simple as pointing your environment to the appropriate installation directory.

ModelSim PE and LE enable individual engineers to develop and debug small to medium size design blocks on Windows and Linux, respectively. ModelSim SE combines high performance and high capacity with the code coverage and debugging capabilities required to simulate larger blocks and systems and attain ASIC gate-level sign-off. ModelSim SE offers the ability to simulate very large designs through support of 32 and 64 bit UNIX and Linux and 32 bit Windows®-based platforms.

The ModelSim SE vopt usage mode achieves industry-leading performance and capacity through very aggressive, global compile and simulation optimization algorithms of Verilog and VHDL. The vopt performance mode can improve Verilog and mixed VHDL/Verilog RTL simulation performance by up to 10X. The vopt mode can also improve gate-level performance by up to 4X and capacity by over 2X.

ModelSim also supports very fast time-tonext-simulation turnarounds while maintaining high performance with its new black box use model, known as bbox. With bbox, non-changing elements can be compiled and optimized once and reused when running a modified version of the testbench. bbox delivers dramatic throughput improvements of up to 3X when running a large
suite of testcases.

Easy-to-Use Simulation Environment
An intelligently engineered graphical user interface (GUI) efficiently displays design data for analysis and debug. The default configuration of windows and information is designed to meet the needs of most users. However, the flexibility of the ModelSim SE GUI allows users to
easily customize it to their preferences. The result is a feature-rich GUI that is easy to use and quickly mastered.

A message viewer enables simulation messages to be logged to the ModelSim results file in addition to the standard transcript file. The GUI’s organizational and filtering capabilities allow design and simulation information to be quickly reduced to focus on areas of interest, such as possible causes of design bugs.

ModelSim SE allows many debug and analysis capabilities to be employed post-simulation on saved results, as well as during live simulation runs. For example, the coverage viewer analyzes and annotates source code with code coverage results, including FSM state and transition, statement, expression, branch, and toggle coverage. Signal values can be annotated in the source window and viewed in the waveform viewer. Race conditions, delta, and event activity can be analyzed in the list and wave windows. User-defined enumeration values can be easily defined for quicker understanding of simulation results. For improved debug productivity, ModelSim also has graphical and textual dataflow capabilities.

The memory window identifies memories in the design and accommodates flexible viewing and modification of the memory contents. Powerful search, fill, load, and save functionalities are supported. The memory window allows memories to be pre-loaded with specific or randomly generated values, saving the time-consuming step of initializing sections of the simulation merely to load memories. All functions are available via the command line, so they can be used in scripting.

Graphical Usage Profiler
The profiler provides an interactive graphical representation of both memory and CPU usage on a per instance basis. It shows which part of the design is consuming CPU or memory resources, allowing engineers to more quickly find problem areas in their code.

Advanced Code Coverage
The ModelSim advanced code coverage capabilities deliver high performance with ease of use. Most simulation optimizations remain enabled with code coverage. Code coverage metrics can be reported by-instance or by-design unit, providing flexibility in managing coverage data. All coverage information is now stored in the Unified Coverage DataBase (UCDB), which is used to collect and manage all coverage information in one highly efficient database. Coverage utilities that analyze code coverage data, such as merging and test ranking, are available. Coverage results can be viewed interactively, post-simulation, or after a merge of multiple simulation runs.

The coverage types supported include:

Statement coverage: number of statementsexecuted during a run
Branch coverage: expressions and case statements that affect the control flow of the HDL execution
Condition coverage: breaks down the condition on a branch into elements that make the result true or false
Expression coverage: the same as condition coverage, but covers concurrent signal assignments instead of branch decisions
Focused expression coverage: presents expression coverage data in a manner that accounts for each independent input to the expression in determining coverage results
Enhanced toggle coverage: in default mode, counts low-to-high and high-to-low transitions; in extended mode, counts transitions to and from X
Finite State Machine coverage: state and state transition coverage

JobSpy
With integrated support of standard load sharing software, JobSpy provides the ability to easily manage and interact with simulation batch jobs. The JobSpy interface allows users to select any submitted batch job, monitor its status, or submit commands; such as, save a snapshot of a waveform, query simulation time, or suspend the job. This can be accomplished with the easy-to-use graphical interface or via the command line interface.

Complete Product Support and Maintenance
Mentor Graphics provides the highest level of support in the industry through its unique Engineer of the Week approach. Customers receive support from the engineers who design the ModelSim products. A standard annual maintenance contract provides technical support, maintenance releases, the Informant email newsletter, and access to on-line support and technical services.

ModelSim SE Datasheet
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