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You can write a perl srcipt which checks the results with golden results at the end of simulation and give pass or fail. 2. You can write interactive scripts to run the intended testcase. 3. You can use it for converting the data from one format to other format perl is you can you can you can a must for a VLSI designer. use perl to generate repetitive RTL coding for you. use perl to generate your simulation input/output data. use perl to write a script to check your simulation result.

yes it is absolutely essential to learn a scripting language (not necessary to r estrict to perl) for Vlsi, to explain you in a simple way , for a trivial thing like compiling your project u need to compile so many files (also their order is very important) this stuff can become a headache if u dont ease it with a scrip t which can do the task for you like an obedient servant.... basically all the things that a script does (mostly used for file handling) can be done manually but time consumed will be exponentially high. Yes, Perl is a very good handy tool for your work, irrespective of design or ver ification.. once you learn the basics, you can minimise your work. there is a topic in perl, Regular Expressions does a lot for the automation. Basically Perl is mostly used for Text processing as far as I know. this will help you in searching for the data in the tool generated logs and to c hange it as per your requirements.... Randomization is very good for verification, and using perl in additon to this, becomes very easy and fast to build verificat ion environment... It is used for pre-simulation and post-simulation file processing Well, in some case, It's a tedious job to handle large numbers of log files(hund reds of or even more) manually, write scripts to handle it may seems more comfor table and easier. u cannot do everything in gui or just type command by command to work when some command takes hours and hours to execute. Also when u query on a huge MB of log file u have no other choice then to use scripting languages. The are other langu ages like awk, sed etc... also which server the same purpose..... Most of the popular the front end tools having TCL shell in built , and they pro vide commands for performing various thing during a single run. More advanced us ers take that benefit and write TCL utilities inside the tool script to get job done. And for Perl I have seen , it is mostly used to run regressions script, au tomatic testbench generation, auto detection of PASS, FAIL , and many more appli cations. First of all, remember that PERL is not a programming language. It is a scriptin g language. That means, we are writting some scripts in order to automate some t hings. Starting from simulating a RTL code to executing a physical design algori thms, we can automate every process. If everything is automated, then the comple te chip design process will be simplified. So, learing perl like any other softw are is not good. Scripting languages are mainly aimed at creating environment. PERL in 24 days is available online. It is a good refernce. PERL, TCL and shell scripts in combination are used all over the ASIC design flo

w. in Synthesis or Back end; they are very usefull. The apllication of scripts are twofold: 1. They are used as the tool wrappers. They can be used to make a strong platfor m which gives the user kind of "push-button" flow. 2. The TCL (especially) used to make configuration scripts, contraints additiong and in general tool configuration and usage options. It enables up to run same setup over and over again with out writing the commands again and again. Also it gives easy configurabilty and provdes means to change the configuration easily in case of any tuning changes. tcl now becomes the standard "command line interface" language for most eda tool s, not only for backend, but also for frontend tools. Perl is more convenient in handling txt and automation. for example, some people uses perl to do ECO (some people use TCL, but through some eda tools' help of c ommands). Learn both of them.

Learn in the following order: 1. 2. 3. 4. Unix commands Shell scripting TCL Perl

1)Perl http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/perl/ -- Example: (SDF File Patching Using Perl) http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/perl/sdf_file_patching/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------2) Tcl/Tk http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/tcltk/

perl is one of important skill for asic design engineer. I used perl script to do many things: --to generate repetitive RTL coding, --to generate input test pattern, --to run simulation, --to check simulation result, --to modify/mange data file. This method always has precedence over specifying parameters during instantiatio n. All the parameter value override assignments can be grouped inside one module an d together in one place, typically in the top-level testbench itself.

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