Waveform viewer
A waveform viewer is a software tool for viewing the signal levels of either a digital or analog circuit design.[1]
Waveform viewers comes in two varieties:
- simulation waveform viewers for displaying signal levels of simulated design models, and
- in-circuit waveform viewers for displaying signal levels captured in-circuit while debugging or testing hardware boards (Also, See Waveform monitor)
Simulation waveform viewers
In integrated circuit design, waveform viewers are typically used in conjunction with a simulation. A waveform view allows an IC designer to see the signal transitions over time and the relation of those signals with other signals in an IC design, which is typically written in a hardware description language. Simulators can be used to interactively capture wave data for immediate viewing on a waveform viewer; however, for integrated circuit design the usage model is typically to save the output of simulation runs by running batch jobs and to view the waveforms off-line as a static database.[1]
Waveform viewers allow you to zoom in and out over a time sequence, and take measurements between two cursor points. In addition, the waveform view has many ways of displaying signal information, such as in hexadecimal, binary, or a symbolic value.[1]
Most waveform viewers can read an industrial standard waveform database known as Value Change Dump (VCD) or a proprietary wave format. The proprietary wave formats usually have faster record and playback speeds or require smaller memory store space, or save additional signal information for viewing, such as bus transactions.[1]
List of the best-known viewers
| Waveform Viewer | Tool Suite | Developer | Platform | Features | Wave Formats | Screenshot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VcdView | NA | Ted Rossin | Windows | digital | *.vcd | |
| EZwave | Questa ADMS | Mentor Graphics | Linux, Solaris, Windows | analog, RF, digital and mixed-signal | *.wdb, *.tab, *.cou, *.sti, *.tr%, *.ac%, *.sw%, *.vcd, *.fsdb, *.csv, *.swd, *.dofile, *.dof, *.do, *.tcl | |
| Simvision | NCSim | Cadence Design Systems | Linux, Solaris, Windows | digital, analog, transactions | *.trn, *.shm, *.vcd | |
| vsim | Modelsim | Mentor Graphics | Linux, Solaris | digital, analog | *.wlf, *.vcd (using vcd2wlf converter utility) |  |
| finewave/PowerView | FineSim | Magma Design Automation | Linux, Solaris | digital, analog | *.fsdb, *.vcd | |
| WaveViewer | works with: VeriLogger | SynaptiCAD | Linux, Solaris, Windows | digital, analog, test equipment, free, high capacity, requires email verification to download | *.btim, *.csdf, *.tdml, *.vcd, 20+ other formats | |
| Wave VCD | works with: CVer | Interconnect Systems Solutions | Windows | digital, free, 32-bit internal time causes problems if the simulated run-time exceeds (2**32) × (VCD timescale). | *.vcd | |
| WaveProbe | LogicSim | Zeemz | Windows | digital, analog | *.wave | |
| vwave | Undertow | Veritools | Linux, Solaris, Windows | digital, analog, transactions | *.vcd | |
| nWave | Verdi | SpringSoft | Linux, Solaris | digital, analog, transactions, assertions | fsdb, *.vcd | |
| Scansion | NA | Logic Poet | Mac OS | digital, analog, TLM transaction viewer, native Mac application | *.vcd, *.scnx | |
| GTKWave | NA | Tony Bybell | Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Unix | digital, free/open source | *.lxt (Icarus Verilog), *.lxt2 (Icarus Verilog), *.vzt, *.ghw (GHDL), *.vcd, *.evcd *.fst (Icarus Verilog, CVC, CVER_FST), *.fsdb, *.vpd (VCS), *.wlf (ModelSim) |  |
| Styx | Hades | Norman Hendrich | Unix | digital, free/open source | ? | |
| Dinotrace | Veripool | Wilson Snyder, Allen Gallotta | Linux, Solaris, Windows | digital, free/open source | *.vcd, *.ascii | |
| Waveform Window | DVE | Synopsys Inc | Linux, Solaris | digital,analog | VCD,eVCD,VPD | |
| Electric | Electric | Static Free Software (staticfreesoft.com) | All (Java) | Integration of schematics and layout with waveform viewer. | tr0, pa0, sw0, ac0, mt0 (Hspice), out (Nanosim), spo (Spice/GNUCap), txt (PSpice), raw (SmartSpice, LTSpice), dump (Verilog). | |
| M1 Waveform Viewer | N/A | ASA Corp (m1ot.com) | Windows | acquire live data from scopes and digitizers, analog and digital, view multiple waveforms at once, 22 parameter measurements, simple collaboration | tr0, txt, csv, wfm (Tek), isf (Tek), bin (Agilent) | |
| iWave Waveform Viewer | Aether-Aeolus-iWave | Empyrean Inc. | linux | Analog, RF, digital and mixed-signal, A->D and D->A conversion, analog/mix-signal waveform comparisons, commonly used calculation, commonly used measurement, Eye-diagram, histogram, TCL support session save/load, Aether-iWave cross probable support | Synopsys: HSPICE tr0, sw0, ac0, mt0, hb0, nw0, lis (Binary/ASCII); Novas fsdb files (binary, v4.1); Verilog VCD (ASCII); | |
| Custom WaveView | Discovery AMS | Synopsys | Linux, Solaris, HP, Windows | Analog, RF, digital and mixed-signal, scripting/batch mode, jitter measurements, DAC toolbox, FFT/iFFT, A->D and D->A conversion, Synopsys/Cadence/Mentor Graphics/JEDAT/Silicon Canvas integration into schematic capture, re-usable measurement templates, HSPICE .measure GUI, digital waveform comparisons, parametric analysis, 3D plots, extremely fast. | Synopsys: HSPICE tr0, sw0, ac0, mt0, hb0, nw0, lis (Binary/ASCII); StarSim wdb, wv, xp (binary); HSIM/NanoSim/XA wdb (binary); HSIM/NanoSim/TimeMill/Powermill out, vector, .mt file (ASCII); Saber AI/PL (binary/ASCII); VCS/Magellan/DVE VPD (binary); WDF format (binary). Cadence: Spectre PSF, WSF (binary/ASCII); runObjFile; PSPICE DAT (binary), Allegro SIM (ASCII); Verilog VCD (ASCII); ModelSim WLF (binary). Mentor Graphics: ELDO/ADMS COU, WDB (binary), AdiT TR0/TB0. SPICE3/SmartSpice raw format (binary/ASCII). Agilent ADS .ds format (binary), TouchStone S-parameters (ASCII). CSDF (Common Simulation Data Format) (ASCII). Novas fsdb files (binary, v4.1). Text file, CSV (comma separated values) format. Other in-house simulator formats: SDIF, MICS, TI-punch (binary). Data from oscilloscopes. | |
| ICD | SMASH | Dolphin Integration | Linux, Windows | analog, digital and mixed-signal | Dolphin: SMASH .tmf, .bwf, .amf, .dmf, .mmf, .nmf; Synopsys: HSpice .sw0, .tr0; Verilog VCD (ASCII, compressed); SPICE3/SmartSpice raw format (binary/ASCII); CSDF (Common Simulation Data Format) (ASCII); Tabulated text file format; | |
| impulse | Eclipse | toem | Linux, Windows, Mac OS, Unix | digital, analog, mixed, transactions, logs, charts, scripting, online data, team support, diff, free, Eclipse plug-in, | recMl/recMZ (Generic Signal Record Formats),recTr Trace Record Format, recJs Script Record Format, VCD (Value Change Dump), TABULAR (Analog tabular format AMS), SCV (Transaction database), FST (Fast Signal Trace), eVCD (Extended Value Change Dump), LXT2 (interLaced eXtensible Trace), VZT (VZT Format), HSpice (tr0 format), NanoSim (Nsout format), Spice3 (Spice3 raw format), OPC (Process data), Sigrok (Logic Analysers, Oscilloscopes, sr-Format),Log4j (), Free pattern log formats (regular expressions),IMP (ukos kernel log format),Amalthea HTF, CSV (Comma-separated values) see file format details |
 |
| EPWave | EDA Playground | Victor EDA | All (Web-browser based) | digital, free, web-browser based | *.vcd |  |
| SignalConstructor | NA | mkn | Linux, Windows | analog, digital and mixed-signal | *.csv, *.tdml | |
| BeSpice Wave | BeSpice | Analog Flavor | Linux, Windows | analog, technology available as widget for many frameworks, conversion tools, free evaluation version, parser library available for C/C++, Python, Matlab, Octave, Tcl | psf, psfxl, tr0, ac0, cou, vcd, csv, tabulated data, Touchstone s-parameter files, spi3 raw files, tdms files, csdf files, PSpice dat files, spice pwl sources, tmf, amf, mmf, nmf, dmf files (Dolphin Integration Smash) |
In-circuit waveform viewers
These are built into most logic analyzer, data acquisition cards, and automatic test equipment. In-circuit waveform viewers are included with products from:
References
See also
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