Use of Scripting languages in VLSI

Very often we come across questions from VLSI engineers that "Which scripting language should a VLSI engineer should learn?".

Well, Shell, Tcl, Perl, and Python are the scripting languages that are commonly used for VLSI front end/back end design automation and related applications. 

TCL: Tcl (pronounced "tickle" or as an initialism) is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language

PERL: Practical Extraction and Reporting Language

PYTHON: Python is a dynamic, object-oriented, high-level programming language that can be used for many kinds of software development/scripting.

Shell Scripting: A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by the Unix/Linux shell which could be one of the following:

The Bourne Shell / The C Shell / The Korn Shell / The GNU Bourne-Again Shell

A shell is a command-line interpreter and typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text.

 

Perl has been in use for several years, but python is increasingly becoming more popular. In the past, we have already shared out views on the advantages of Python. Ref: Advantages of Python over Perl

Tcl is also used mostly for tool interfaces as several EDA tools support that.

If you know any kind of programming, learning a new scripting language will be easy.

Following are some commonly used applications of scripting languages in VLSI:

• Front end RTL/Testbench code compilation and simulation flows
• Automation of running tests in regressions, generating reports, analyzing failures, debug automation
• Connectivity checks, netlist parsing, automatic generation/modification any RTL module/stubs, etc
• Synthesis, P&R tools interfacing, and back end flow.
• Several project management utilities - regression pass rates, trends, bug charts, etc - that helps in tracking projects
• Any other task that is repetitive in workflow and can be automated.

Here is a complete comparison of TCL, PYTHON and PERL.

TCL vs PERL vs PYTHON