ModelSim Installation Tutorial Greg Gibeling UC Berkeley gdgib eecs berkeley edu October 21 2007 1 Introduction In this document I will cover the basics of installing ModelSim see section 2 compiling the Xilinx simulation libraries and simulating a simple example project see section 3 This document is targetted at both RDL users and more generally those new to the simulation of digital logic EECS150 and CS61C students EECS150 and CS61C users needn t worry about installation as the relevant Berkeley computers those in 125 Cory for EECS150 and ilinux1 2 3 for CS61C already have ModelSim properly installed Students may wish to read the installation section if they are interested in running ModelSim on their home computers CS61C students like all people not using Xilinx FPGAs should ignore the instructions in this document which mention Xilinx In general RDL users will need section 2 but should refer to the CounterExample distributed with RDLC for use Section 3 on the other hand is meant for those without ModelSim experience or those who need a refresher in particular U C Berkeley students in CS61C or EECS150 Note that as of this writing the current versions of various pieces of software mentioned in this document are RDLC 2 2007 6 7 and ModelSim SE 6 2g 2 Installation Setup Make sure you have a license Step1 Download the installer from Mentor Graphs http www model com i You probably want SE which is not the same as the student edition assuming you your company or school has purchased a license ii Students should consider the http www model com resources student edition download asp which has a limited time license Otherwise you may wish to use the Xilinx Edition or Altera Edition of ModelSim which are both limited to simulating smaller designs Step2 Run the installer i You will want the full rather than the evaluation version assuming you already have a license ii The installer should create a directory c Modeltech version Step3 Install the license by setting MGLS LICENSE FILE or running the licensing wizard i The former is recommended if you have a floating license on a server somewhere ii The license for ModelSim should be of the form 1717 somehost domain iii If you have an actual license dat file simply set MGLS LICENSE FILE to the absolute path to license dat Step4 Build the simulation libraries 1 i Make ModelSim ini in c Modeltech version writeable it is marked read only by the installer ii Run compxlib to compile the xilinx libraries Note that it is best to run from c Modeltech version This will modify ModelSim ini in the current directory to include paths to the Xilinx libraries iii Not necessary unless you intend to use ModelSim to simulate designs for Xilinx FPGAs RDLC2 as of v2 2007 3 26 will require this Step5 This should complete your installation of ModelSim Step6 You may test your installation by attempting to simulate as described below a simple project with a single verilog file shown in program 1 Program 1 TestVerilog v module T e s t V e r i l o g i n i t i a l begin 3 display H e l l o World 4 end 5 endmodule 1 2 3 Use The purpose of an HDL simulator is to compile and then simulate an HDL hardware description language Verilog and VHDL are examples on a standard computer While this is very slow compared to a real circuit implementation it allows complete visibility and can be much less expensive making it ideal for design and debugging Note that as a circuit grows in complexity an FPGA will generally be a better platform as the simulator will start to degrade in performance and has no true IO connections ModelSim is a very powerful HDL simulation environment and as such can be difficult to master To correctly simulate many complex test benches you will need to create and use a ModelSim project manually Note that throughout this tutorial we assume you are attempting to simulate a purely Verilog based design The steps are fairly simple Step1 Create a directory for your project section 3 1 Step2 Start ModelSim and create a new project section 3 2 Step3 Add all your Verilog files to the project section 3 3 Step4 Compile your Verilog files section 3 4 Step5 Start the simulation section 3 5 Step6 Add signals to the wave window section 3 6 Step7 Recompile changed verilog files section 3 7 Step8 Restart Run the simulation section 3 8 3 1 Step1 Create a Directory for your Project a Because ModelSim creates rather large output files you should not save your ModelSim projects It is a simple matter to recreate the project anyway b Create a directory for your simulation For CS61C Students create a subdirectory somewhere in your home directory perhaps something like simulation For EECS150 students create a subdirectory in C Users cs150 xxx perhaps something like C Users cs150 xxx Simulation c When you are done simulating delete this entire directory this will remove the ModelSim project and all of its temporary files Obviously your source code should be elsewhere so that you do not delete it 2 3 2 Step2 Start ModelSim and Create a Project a Start ModelSim On windows there is often a shortcut on the desktop or start menu On UNIX or Linnux simply run vsim For CS61C students you will need to take the extra step of logging into ilinux1 eecs berkeley edu ilinux2 or ilinux3 where ModelSim is installed Be sure to login using ssh X or the GUI will not be able to launch b At the main ModelSim window go to File New Project i ii iii iv 3 3 Enter a project name this is for your reference only Set the Project Location to the directory you created in section 3 1 above You can leave the Default Library Name as work Click OK Step3 Add Your Verilog to the Project a Click Add Existing File to add your Verilog files to the project i Click Browse to locate the Verilog files you wish to add ii Note you can add multiple files at a time by using Shift Click or Control Click to select them all at once iii Leave Add File as Type on default iv Leave Folder as Top Level v You will almost certainly want to select reference from current location otherwise you will end up with multiple copies of the same verilog file floating around a sure way to lose something Note that you will want to select copy to project directory for const v and any other include files otherwise ModelSim will not be able to find them vi Click OK b Repeat this until all of the necessary verilog files have been added to the project i All of the Verilog files for the modules you are using must be added this way not just the top level
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