Running Sentaurus on the DOE Network

Transcription

1 Running Sentaurus on the DOE Network Department of Electronics Carleton University April 2016

2 Warning: This primer is intended to cover the DOE.CARLETON.CA domain. Other domains are not covered in this primer. Table of Contents Licensing and Accounts...2 Linux Basics...3 Terminal...3 Transferring Files between Linux and Windows...5 Killing Lost Process...6 Starting Sentaurus...7 Setting the Sentaurus Workbench project database environment variable...8 Common Sentaurus Tools...9 Notes about Sentaurus...9 Licensing and Accounts Before even attempting to use Sentaurus, you must ensure you have a license for the tool. Sentaurus licensing in the Department of Electronics (DOE) at Carleton University is handled by the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation, otherwise known as CMC Microsystems. Generally speaking there are two ways to get a license. The first is to be registered in a course which uses the Sentaurus suite, the second is to be a graduate student whose supervisor is a CMC subscriber with a Synopsys tools license, and has identified you as one of their grad students. In the case you are simply registered for a course, and are not a graduate student, either your Professor or the support staff at Carleton, will provide you with a username and password to access the design tools that has already been registered with CMC for you. In the case that you are a graduate student, you will be required to set up two accounts. The first account you require is a login for the DOE Linux Workstations. If you haven t already done so, contact the DOE System Administrator to get an account set up for you. The second account you require is a CMC account. If you don t already have a CMC account, go to and create one. You will be required to select your supervisor from a list, and your supervisor will have to confirm that you are their student. AFTER your supervisor has confirmed your student status, log into a Linux Workstation and run CADactivate. Note that when you are promoted for a username, you must use your Linux Workstation username. This tool can be found on the Linux Workstations in the Applications DOE Tools menu box. Alternatively CADactivate can be run at the link below 2

3 If the activation process was successful, you should have a license to use Sentaurus within 24 hours. Linux Basics There are many Linux tutorials freely available on the Internet. If you ve never used Linux before, you are highly encouraged to look one up. What follows are bare minimum instructions in order to launch Sentaurus. The Linux Workstations in the Department of Electronics are all accessed remotely. You can log in from your Windows based lab or office PC, or any PC on the DOE network, with the Unix Systems icon on the desktop. Figure 1: Unix Systems Desktop Icon Launching the Unix Systems program will present a list of computers. Due to a quirky System Administrator, all the Linux systems on the DOE network are named after Norse Gods (Loki, Odin, Thor, etc ). Select the computer with the most resources available, and click Connect. This will initiate a remote connection to the Linux Workstation using Xconnect. There is however a problem with Xconnect. If you close the window, on purpose or otherwise, you will lose the session and all unsaved data. Additionally, it is possible for the process you were running to become lost and continue to use valuable resources while not producing useful data. It is good practice to periodically check for lost processes that you ve accidentally created and terminate them; more on this later. Some other remote desktop protocols are currently being tested, such as encrypted VNC and X2Go, which will maintain your session should you wish to disconnect and reconnect later. Contact the System Administrator for more details. After logging into a Linux Workstation you ll be presented with a Linux Desktop Environment. DOE Linux Workstations use the GNOME Desktop Environment. Some frequently used applications are available in the Applications Menu at the top right of the Desktop. However, for launching tools like Sentaurus, it is highly recommended that your launch the tool from a Terminal session. Terminal Before Linux had a Graphical User Interface (GUI), all commands were entered in text through a Terminal session. Often it is still more efficient and practical to make use of the Linux Terminal instead of the GUI Desktop Environment. 3

4 To launch a Terminal, you can Right-Click on the Desktop, and select Open in Terminal, or go to Applications System Tools Terminal. It is also possible the Terminal may be located in Applications Accessories. You will be presented with a window like the one below in Figure 2: Linux Terminal. It s possible that your Terminal will look a little different, but the same features should be present. Figure 2: Linux Terminal If you chose to open the Terminal from the Applications menu, the Terminal should open in your Home folder. This is a directory created to store all your user data and you have full permissions to the files you create there. If you chose to open the Terminal from the Desktop, the Terminal should open in your Desktop folder. This is a directory in your Home folder and is where all your items on the Desktop are stored. To change directories while using a Terminal, you use the change directory command cd. To list all the files in the current directly use ls. If you ve gotten lost and don t remember what directory you re in, the command for present working directly is pwd. Keep in mind that all Terminal commands and filenames are case-sensitive. A short list of commands you need to know, and how to use them, follows. Command Function Syntax Examples cd Change cd By default changes to your home directory directory cd ~ Changes to your home directory cd /home/username/desktop Changes to your desktop directory cd ~/Desktop Also changes to your Desktop directory. Note ~ is a short form of /home/username 4

5 ls List directory ls Lists files and folders in the current directory. pwd Present working pwd Gives the full path of the present working directory directory mkdir Make directory mkdir ClassProject1 Creates a ClassProject1 folder in the mv cp rm top man gedit Move files (or directory) Copy files (or directory) Remove files (or directory) Process monitor Opens a manual Opens a simple graphical text editor current directory mv file1.txt ~/ClassProject1/ Moves files1.txt to ClassProject1 mv ~/file1.txt. Moves file1.txt to the current directory mv file1.txt file2.txt Renames file1.txt to file2.txt cp file1.txt file2.txt Copies file1.txt to file2.txt rm file1.txt rm r ClassPorject1 top man rm gedit gedit file1.txt gedit file1.txt & Deletes file1.txt Deletes the ClassProject1 directory Opens a process monitoring tool. Press q to quit. Opens the manual for the rm command. Press q to quit Opens the gedit text editor Opens file1.txt in a text editor Adding the ampersand (&) at the end of the command allows you to keep using the terminal window without needing to close the program first. This is true of any program that needs to be closed by the user. If you aren t comfortable using a Terminal to navigate through your files, you can use File Browser to graphically see your files and folders, just like Microsoft s Windows Explorer. File Browser is located in the Applications System Tools menu. Transferring Files between Linux and Windows If you are using computers on the DOE.CARLETON.CA domain, transferring files between Linux and Windows is easy. Your Linux home folder is automatically mounted as the U:\ drive when you log into computers on the DOE.CARLETON.CA domain. Additionally, in your Linux home folder there is a directory called win. On Windows based PCs this folder it mounted as your W:\ drive automatically. Any files you put in this folder in Linux, or any files put on your W:\ drive in Windows will be accessible from both systems. See Figure 3: Linux Home Folder and Figure 4: Windows U:\ and W:\ drives and note the location of the sharing folders. 5

6 Figure 3: Linux Home Folder Figure 4: Windows U:\ and W:\ drives Killing Lost Process Unlike your home computer that you can simply reboot whenever a problem appears to try and fix it or clear up resources, servers run continuously and are used by many users at once. If left unchecked, lost processes can add up consuming CPU resources and memory reducing server performance for other users. Only you, or the System Administrator, can close processes you ve started so it s a good habit to clean up after yourself. You can use the top command to see a list of running process, the resources they are consuming, and the name of the user who started it. Each command is also issued a Process Identification Number (PID) which lets you modify how the process is being run. Shown in Figure 5: Lost Cadence Processes, is an example of a system with several lost processes. In total these processes are consuming nearly half the CPU resources of a 16 core machine while not performing any useful function. Cadence, shown in the image as virtuoso is the biggest contributor to wasted processes in the DOE. As described earlier they are often formed when Cadence loses the connection to a simulation it started. If you see a virtuoso process using 100% of a CPU and has been running for an exceedingly long time, it s almost certainly lost. If the process was started by you, you should terminate (kill) the process. 6

7 Figure 5: Lost Cadence Processes Killing a process with top is easy. First, start top by opening a Terminal, and entering the top command. From the list of processes identify the PID for the lost process you started. Press k to indicate you want to kill a process, enter the PID for the lost process, and then press 9, then enter. The process should disappear from the list and the resources freed up. Now press q to quit top. Starting Sentaurus Now that you know how to create folders, and have a basic understanding of Terminal commands, you are in a position to start Sentaurus. The procedure is quite simple, but there are some things you must remember. First, Sentaurus isn t a single program, but a suite of different tools which can be called either from the Terminal command line, or from the Sentaurus Workbench GUI. Sentaurus Workbench can be very handy for running parameterized simulations and tracking all the data. If you chose to use Sentaurus Workbench, you should set an environment variable which tells Sentaurus where your projects are saved. If this environment variable is not set, Sentaurus Workbench will prompt you for your projects database every time you run the program. 7

8 Setting the Sentaurus Workbench project database environment variable If you haven t already done so, make a directory to store your Sentaurus Projects. For example, you could use the commands below. cd ~ mkdir SentaurusDB To set the environment variable use the command below. export STDB=/home/your_username/SentaurusDB At this point, you ve created a folder for your Sentaurus projects and set the STDB environment variable to point to it. However, if you open a new Terminal, you ll have to set the environment variable again. To automate setting the STDB environment variable use a text editor (gedit) to open the file.bashrc in your home folder (gedit ~/.basrc) and copy and paste the export command (export STDB=/home/your_username/SentaurusDB) to the bottom of the file and save. There are a variety of different Terminals available for Linux, and by default DOE uses the Bourne Again SHell (BASH) Terminal. The.bashrc file contains a list of commands that are run automatically every time a Terminal is opened. Provided you ve met the licensing requirements discussed above, you can now launch Sentaurus Workbench from a Terminal using the command swb. Training and Manuals For detailed instructions on how to use the Sentaurus tools, check the training guides located on the Linux Workstations in the folder below. Use a web browser to open the index.html file to start the training. /CMC/tools/synopsys/sentaurus_vL_ /tcad/current/Sentaurus_Trainings Manuals for all the tools in the Sentaurus suite can be found in the directory below. /CMC/tools/synopsys/sentaurus_vL_ /tcad/current/manuals/PDFManual 8

9 Common Sentaurus Tools A list of common Sentaurus tools can be found in Table 1: Common Sentaurus tools. Table 1: Common Sentaurus tools Tool Purpose Command Line Executable Sentaurus Workbench A GUI for parameterizing sets of swb Sentaurus simulations Sentaurus Structure Editor A tool for drawing, and modifying, 2D sde and 3D simulation structures Sentaurus Process A semiconductor process simulator. sprocess Simulating oxide growth, stress, etc. Sentaurus Visual A 2D and 3D data visualization tool. svisual Sentaurus Device A semiconductor device simulator. Simulation diodes, MOSFETs, BJTs, etc. sdevice Notes about Sentaurus When saving a project in Sentaurus Workbench, be sure to include the full path for the save folder. If you do not include the full path, you will receive an error be unable to save. Each tool in Sentaurus, with the exception of Sentaurus Workbench, requires a text input file to run. Details on how to create these input files can be found in the Sentaurus Training documents, and in the manuals. 9