Applications¶
The Q&CE department has support for a number of commercial EDA, Simulation and Development environments. The application environments are activated with the Lmod Environment Module System (See Lmod User Guide). It is possible to activate more then one environment for application interaction. The latest version of the tools is always the default.
The following commercial applications are currently supported on the Q&CE department servers:
Cadence IC Package¶
The Cadence IC Package comprises a suite of advanced design and analysis tools for implementing digital, analogue and mixed-signal IC designs. See Europractice Cadence IC package for more information.
Warning
The Cadence IC package can only be used if you signed the Cadence EULA. You can sign the EULA at the office of Arjan van Genderen (HB10.030) or send him a mail with a Cadence EULA signing request.
The module command to enable the Cadence IC package is:
module load IC
Synopsys Advanced TCAD Suite (TCAD)¶
The Advanced TCAD suite provides an extensive set of tools for semiconductor process and device modelling, with and integrated analysis scenario exploration environment. The suite includes tools for 2D/3D process simulation and modelling, structure definition, device simulation, compact model generation, and 2D/3D interconnect field solvers. See Europractice Synopsys TCAD for more information.
The module command to enable the Synopsys TCAD suite is:
module load TCAD
Synopsys Analogue Simulation & Modelling Suite (ASM)¶
The Analogue Simulation and Modelling suite includes a wide range of tools for full-custom design, analogue circuit simulation and verification. The suite includes Custom Compiler for full custom design plus a range of Spice and Fast-Spice, RF simulation capabilities. See Europractice Synopsys ASM for more information.
The module command to enable the Synopsys ASM suite is:
module load ASM
Mathworks Matlab¶
MATLAB combines a desktop environment tuned for iterative analysis and design processes with a programming language that expresses matrix and array mathematics directly. It includes the Live Editor for creating scripts that combine code, output, and formatted text in an executable notebook.
The module command to enable MATLAB is:
module load matlab
Mentor Questa Advanced Simulator¶
The Questa Advanced Simulator combines high performance and capacity simulation with unified advanced debug and functional coverage capabilities for the most complete native support of Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHDL, SystemC, SVA, UPF and UVM.
The module command to enable the Questa Simulator is:
module load questasim
Xilinx Vivado Design Suite¶
The new Vivado Design Suite HLx editions supply design teams with the tools and methodology needed to leverage C-based design and optimized reuse, IP sub-system reuse, integration automation and accelerated design closure. When coupled with the UltraFast High-Level Productivity Design Methodology Guide, this unique combination is proven to accelerate productivity by enabling designers to work at a high level of abstraction while facilitating design reuse.
The module command to enable Xilinx Vivado is:
module load Vivado
Xilinx Vitis Unified Software Platform¶
The Vitis unified software platform enables the development of embedded software and accelerated applications on heterogeneous Xilinx platforms including FPGAs, SoCs, and Versal ACAPs. It provides a unified programming model for accelerating Edge, Cloud, and Hybrid computing applications. Leverage integration with high-level frameworks, develop in C, C++, or Python using accelerated libraries or use RTL-based accelerators & low-level runtime APIs for more fine-grained control over implementation. The Vitis Unified Software Platform succeeds the SDx Development Environments. Both are available.
The module command to enable Xilinx Vitis is:
module load Vitis
The module command to load Xilinx SDx is:
module load SDx
Nvidia CUDA¶
CUDA is a parallel computing platform and programming model developed by NVIDIA for general computing on graphical processing units (GPUs). With CUDA, developers are able to dramatically speed up computing applications by harnessing the power of GPUs. In GPU-accelerated applications, the sequential part of the workload runs on the CPU – which is optimized for single-threaded performance – while the compute intensive portion of the application runs on thousands of GPU cores in parallel. When using CUDA, developers program in popular languages such as C, C++, Fortran, Python and MATLAB and express parallelism through extensions in the form of a few basic keywords. The CUDA Toolkit from NVIDIA provides everything you need to develop GPU-accelerated applications. The CUDA Toolkit includes GPU-accelerated libraries, a compiler, development tools and the CUDA runtime.
Note
The CUDA environment will need a NVIDIA GPU to function properly.
The module command to enable CUDA is:
module load cuda
Nvidia cuDNN¶
The NVIDIA CUDA Deep Neural Network library (cuDNN) is a GPU-accelerated library of primitives for deep neural networks. cuDNN provides highly tuned implementations for standard routines such as forward and backward convolution, pooling, normalization, and activation layers. Deep learning researchers and framework developers worldwide rely on cuDNN for high-performance GPU acceleration. It allows them to focus on training neural networks and developing software applications rather than spending time on low-level GPU performance tuning. cuDNN accelerates widely used deep learning frameworks, including Caffe,Caffe2, Chainer, Keras,MATLAB, MxNet, TensorFlow, and PyTorch.
Note
cuDNN needs the CUDA environment and a NVIDIA GPU to work properly
The module command to enable cuDNN is:
module load cuda cudnn
GNU Developer Toolset¶
The GNU Developer Toolset is a complete suite of GNU software tools including the GNU Compiler Collection C, C++, Fortran, GDB Debugger, and additional performance monitoring tools.
Note
The GNU Developer Toolset environment should also be enabled for applications which are developed with this toolset.
The module command to enable the GNU Developer Toolset is:
module load devtoolset
Gurobi Optimizer¶
The fastest and most powerful mathematical programming solver available for your LP, QP and MIP (MILP, MIQP, and MIQCP) problems. The Gurobi Optimizer enables users to state their toughest business problems as mathematical models and then finds the best solution out of trillions of possibilities. Gurobi Optimizer can also become a decision-making assistant, guiding the choices of a skilled expert or even run in fully autonomous mode without human intervention.
The module command to enable gurobi is:
module load gurobi
COMSOL Multiphysics¶
Engineers and scientists use the COMSOL Multiphysics® software to simulate designs, devices, and processes in all fields of engineering, manufacturing, and scientific research. COMSOL Multiphysics® is a simulation platform that provides fully coupled multiphysics and single-physics modeling capabilities.
The module command to enable COMSOL is:
module load comsol