Parameter uniquification style (+ other small improvements)

[grg]

Only review ea33d5b3 .. 203e2ea1. The other commits are in different PRs.

Uniquification style

Primary change in this PR is the addition of a new parameter uniquification style. Instead of making modules unique by adding the suffix _unq<number>, instead modules are uniquified by adding abbreviated versions of their parameters (name + value).

The uniquification suffix is formed concatenating the abbreviated parameter name plus its suffix (e.g., if MY_PARAM is set to 2, then the suffix _MP_2 is appended to the input module name) for each parameter passed specified in the generate call.

The abbreviation algorithm attempts to take the first letter of each word in the parameter name. In situations where it detects multiple parameters would produce the same abbreviation, it increases the number of letters included. For example;

• A single parameter MY_PARAM is abbreviated to MP.
• Two parameters MY_PARAM and MIN_POS both produce MP if we only take the first letter of each word. Instead, the algo produces MYP and MIP respectively for the two parameters.

Motivation:
This new uniquification style makes it much easier to identify which instance of a given module corresponds to a particular parameter set.

Consider a memory wrapper that's frequently used in a project and which takes a ROWS and WIDTH parameter. It's hard to tell from the filename mem_wrapper_unq15 what the corresponding memory size is, but it's easy to identify from mem_wrapper_R_1024_W_137.

Limitations:
I haven't yet added code to handle "complex" parameter values. When values are simple types (strings, integers), then the naming is as you would expect. However, if a value is complex (e.g., a list, a reference), then the filename will end up with the perl representation of that complex value, e.g., _MP_ARRAY(0x12345678).

Default behavior
I've made this new uniquification style the default because of its usefulness. You can still select the old uniquification style through command-line parameters.

Let me know if you want me to hold off on this for now.

Other changes

• Instance paths are cached to speed up calls to get_instance_path. Without this, get_instance_path calls can greatly add to execution time in large designs.
• Inputlist files support a richer set of features. In addition to specifying a list of files, then can now also specify -input, -inputlist, -incpath, and -srcpath values equivalent to those specified on the commandline.
• Added generate_w_name function to generate a module with a specific name.
• Avoid parsing the same file multiple times.

[steveri]

Let me know if you want me to hold off on this for now.

No need to hold off yet BUT of course I will want to do extensive testing.
In particular I will be running the full suite of aha tests using these new changes.
The test suite itself takes upwards of 24-36 hours IIRC, plus there will be setup time and such.

I hope it works, because I feel like this is a great improvement. Thanks for doing this!

Kalhan, Yuchen, please forward to anyone in your group that you think may be interested...
@kalhankoul96
@yuchen-mai

[steveri]

Hm looks like maybe something is broken here.

This version of Genesis seems to find input files BUT ONLY if they are in the top level of the directory hierarchy.

This is the short version of what I see:

% ls -l jtag_ifc.svp global_controller/sim/genesis/jtag_ifc.svp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 867 Jan 12 23:43 global_controller/sim/genesis/jtag_ifc.svp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 867 Jan 22 10:05 jtag_ifc.svp

% Genesis2.pl -parse -top jtag_ifc -input jtag_ifc.svp
<succeeds with no complaints>

% Genesis2.pl -parse -top jtag_ifc -input global_controller/sim/genesis/jtag_ifc.svp
ERROR    ERROR    ERROR    ERROR    ERROR    ERROR    ERROR    ERROR
Genesis2::Manager ERROR in Line  of File global_controller/sim/genesis/jtag_ifc.svp
ERROR Message:

        Genesis2::Manager->find_file: Can not find file global_controller/sim/genesis/jtag_ifc.svp 
         Search Path:                                                                   

Exiting Genesis2 due to fatal error... bye bye... 

% cat jtag_ifc.svp
/*=============================================================================
** Module: jtag_ifc
** Description:
**              jtag interface
** Author: Taeyoung Kong
** Change history: 04/12/2019 - Implement first version of interface
**===========================================================================*/

interface `$self->get_module_name()`();

    logic                                tck;
    logic                                tdi;
    logic                                tms;
    logic                                trst_n;
    logic                                tdo;

    modport dut (
        input  tck,
        input  tdi,
        input  tms,
        input  trst_n,
        output tdo
    );

    modport test (
        output tck,
        output tdi,
        output tms,
        output trst_n,
        input tdo
    );

endinterface

Let me know if you want the longer version, with my complete setup from beginning to end etc. ...