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Set Up MATLAB-HDL Simulator Connection

Start MATLAB Server

Start a MATLAB® server for cosimulation with an HDL simulator. This is not required for Vivado® simulator users, since the simulation runs as a single process with a shared DLL.

Start the MATLAB server as follows:

  1. Start MATLAB.

  2. In the MATLAB Command Window, call the hdldaemon function with property name/property value pairs that specify whether the HDL Verifier™ software is to perform the following tasks:

    • Use shared memory or TCP/IP socket communication

    • Return time values in seconds or as 64-bit integers

See hdldaemon reference documentation for when and how to specify property name/property value pairs and for more examples of using hdldaemon.

The communication mode that you specify (shared memory or TCP/IP sockets) must match what you specify for the communication mode when you initialize the HDL simulator for use with a MATLAB cosimulation session using the matlabtb or matlabcp function. In addition, if you specify TCP/IP socket mode, the socket port that you specify with hdldaemon and matlabtb or matlabcp must match. See TCP/IP Socket Ports for more information.

The MATLAB server can service multiple simultaneous HDL simulator modules and clients. However, your code must track the I/O associated with each entity or client.

Note

You cannot begin an HDL Verifier transaction between MATLAB and the HDL simulator from MATLAB. The MATLAB server simply responds to function call requests that it receives from the HDL simulator.

This command sets up socket communication on port 4449, and specifies a 64-bit time resolution format for the MATLAB function's output ports.

hdldaemon('socket',4449,'time','int64')

Start HDL Simulator

Start the HDL simulator directly from MATLAB by calling the HDL Verifier function vsim or nclaunch. 

>>vsim

You can call vsim or nclaunch with additional parameters; see the reference pages for details.

You must make sure the HDL simulator executables — also called vsim (ModelSim®) and nclaunch (Cadence® Xcelium™) — are on the system path. See your system documentation for instruction on setting environment variables.

Linux Users

Make sure the HDL simulator executable is still on the system path after the shell is launched from MATLAB. If it is not, make sure the shell startup file does not remove it from the path environment variable.

Load an HDL Design for Verification

After you start the HDL simulator from MATLAB with a call to vsim or nclaunch, load an instance of an HDL module for verification or visualization with the function vsimmatlab or hdlsimmatlab. At this point, you should have coded and compiled your HDL model. Issue the function vsimmatlab or hdlsimmatlab for each instance of an entity or module in your model that you want to cosimulate. For example (for use with Xcelium):

hdlsimmatlab work.osc_top

This command loads the HDL Verifier library, opens a simulation workspace for osc_top, and display a series of messages in the HDL simulator command window as the simulator loads the entity (see example for remaining code).