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Cadence Installation
Manual
Pavan Bhargava and Timothy Lee
The Manual
1. System Requirements
2. Overview
Cadence includes a large suite of tools and is the industry standard electronic design automation (EDA).
Use of Cadence software is provided for free to UMD students. The university has Cadence installed on
the Glue file system and it can be run from the servers that are part of Glue. For the purposes of
ENEE408D only two of the Cadence tools are used, IC615 for schematics and layout, and MMSIM111 for
simulation (important to know if you are installing Cadence). Although Cadence is available to all UMD
students through the Glue system, the servers often become slow when many users are logged in at
once. This manual will show you how to install the Cadence tools that are required for this class on your
own personal computer. You will still use the UMD license and will be required to have a campus IP
address while using the software. You can either use your personal computer to run Cadence while you
are on campus, or you can use a VPN to connect to the campus network. We recommend that you use
Cisco AnyConnect VPN which is available on terpware.umd.edu. Cadence will not be able to checkout
licenses if it doesnt think that it is on the UMD network.
The following steps outline the installation procedure:
1. Install Linux within a virtual machine.
2. Download, install, register and update Red Hat Eneterprise Linux 5.1 Server edition.
3. Download and install the various files required to run Cadence.
Cadence runs natively on a Linux environment. We focus this guide on installing Cadence in Red Hat,
which is a type of Linux operating system. This section is dedicated to outlining the installation process
for VirtualBox, which is a way of having a Red Hat operating system virtually on your Windows or Mac
OSX installation. Red Hat can also be installed using other software such as Parallels or VMware, or
natively as a separate partition on your hard drive. We will not be covering these other installation
methods. If one of these methods is used, skip to the Pre-installation setup section.
Downloads
Choose the Create a virtual hard drive now option, then choose VDI (VirtualBox Disk
Image), we prefer dynamically allocated hard drives to minimize space usage.
Here you need to choose the size of the virtual hard drive for your Red Hat installation. We
recommend that you use at least 40GB in order to have enough space for Cadence and your
simulations. We suggest that you allocate more space if you have more available on your hard
drive. Note: This space is VERY difficult to increase; we suggest that you choose at least 60GB
for a Cadence-only installation of Red Hat.
We will now change some of the settings in VirtualBox. In the General tab, select Advanced and
change the Shared Clipboard and DragnDrop options as desired. In the Display tab, add
more video memory and activate 3D acceleration.
The virtual machine should see the bootable ISO image and run it automatically. The screen in
Figure 7 should appear. If it doesnt, and you have an error about hardware virtualization, please
refer to the following guide: http://askubuntu.com/questions/256792/how-do-i-enablehardware-virtualization-technology-vt-x-for-use-in-virtualbox
When the installation prompts for an installation number, select Skip entering Installation
Number
Erase all data on the virtual hard drive in order to prepare the system for partitioning Note: This
erases your virtual hard drive created just for Red Hat (not your entire real computer hard drive)
Select Remove the linux partitions on selected drives and create default layout
Configure your network devices as shown in Figure 11
In the VirtualBox toolbar at the top of the screen, click on Devices and Install Guest
Additions or Insert Guest Additions CD image (in the VitualBox window).
Open a terminal by right clicking the desktop and clicking Open in Terminal and navigate to
/media/ then enter the directory beginning with VBOXADDITIONS_
Type su and enter your password
Type ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run, and let the installation run
Reboot the virtual system
Finally we will configure the shared folders. This will designate which files to share between the host and
the guest operating systems.
Go back to your VirtualBox settings and click the Shared Folders tab. Add a shared folder on
your host system, making sure to check the auto-mount box.
You will now need to add yourself to the group vboxsf so that you can access the shared folder
from within Red Hat. This is done by going to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups.
Then double click your username, click on the Groups tab, scroll down to vboxsf and check the
box.
You will then need to restart Red Hat. This can be done by going to System -> Shutdown ->
Restart. You will be able to access the shared folder once the system has rebooted. The location
of the shared folder will be in /media/whatever_name_you_chose. You can access it from the
desktop by double clicking Computer -> Filesystem -> media.
The Cadence installation will involve downloading the Cadence compressed file. Uncompressing it in
your /opt folder. Then you will create a CadenceIC6 folder in your home directory and run Cadence from
within that folder.
You can download the Cadence compressed file on your host computer and move it to the
shared folder, or you can directly download into the Red Hat OS. You will be decompressing it in
your /opt folder so its best to download it directly to there.
Open a Terminal, by going to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
Change directory to /opt. Then become root, this is necessary because /opt is a system folder.
cd /opt
su
You are done installing Cadence, change back to your home directory.
cd ~
Starting Cadence
When you start Cadence you will have to run a script that will update your environmental variables and
add the Cadence executable to you path. Note that this only has to be done once within a terminal
instance. You can then run the executable.
Source the environmental variables. (Do this only once for a particular terminal)
. virtuoso.env
UNIX Guide
If youve ever seen a UNIX based operating system, you might be familiar with the terminal. If you
havent, the blank space and lack of windowed navigation might be daunting. The GUI that comes with
your installation of Red Hat doesnt give you the full access and privileges that you will need. This
section will remind you of a few simple commands to help you get started.
Opening a terminal instance, in Red Hat this is done by clicking on Applications -> Accessories ->
Terminal. You will run all your commands in a terminal window.
Important Keywords:
sudo - When added to the beginning of certain lines, this prefix gives administrative powers to the
command. This is important for accessing files in protected areas of the system or changing their access.
(note that this is not automatically enabled in Red Hat, use the su command instead)
su changes you to the super user, you will be prompted for your password. Although you need to be
the super user (aka root) to run certain commands in this guide, you can damage your Red Hat
installation if you edit or delete the wrong files. For this reason it is good to type exit and change back to
your normal user when you are done running the commands.
source or . - Adding this command, either the words source or the period . before executing a
script such as virtuoso.env is important. The scripts goal may be to change environmental variables, but
without this before the command, the changes will not be permanent.
Commands:
Format: COMMAND (-ALTERNATIVE FLAGS) [OTHER INPUTS]
ls (-la) - Lists all the files in the current directory. Adding -la includes showing hidden files such as
.cdsenv.
cd [destination] - Changes the directory to the destination. Using .. moves one directory up.
cd ..
mkdir [name] - Makes a directory with the specified name within the current working directory.
cp [original-file] [destination] - Copies a designated file to the destination.
gedit [file-name] (&) - Opens the file with gedit, which comes with the Ubuntu installation.
pwd - Outputs the current working directory to help you keep track of where you are.
rm (-f) [name] - Deletes a file named name. This cannot be undone so be careful.
tar (-xjf) [file-name] [destination] - Unzips the file name into the destination folder. The qualifiers -xjf
are specific for unzipping .bz2 folders.
chmod [777] [file or directory] - Changes the permissions of a file or directory to give full access for all
users.
grep [search term] - Searches an input for the search term and outputs the corresponding line (details
below)
env - Displays a list of the environmental variables
Tip: It might be helpful to use grep to narrow the results of the env output.
Ex: env | grep [search terms] - The pipe | keyword feeds the results of env into grep
export [variable-name]=[value] - Changes the value for an environmental setup such as $CDS_LIC_FILE,
which is declared with a $ in front, to the inputted value.
ps (-eaf) - Displays a list of running processes. Sometimes, the process you need is hidden, and adding
the qualifier -eaf shows all the information. Again, it might be helpful to pipe | the output to a grep
to narrow down the results.
kill [process-ID] - Forcibly terminates a process with the inputted process ID obtained through a ps
command.
perf_test (-f 111) - Tries to access the license and ping the proper server. 111 is the license number
associated with Cadence
virtuoso (&) - Opens Cadence Virtuoso. If all the setup was done properly and the environmental
variables set, then the software will take a minute and open.