The Run Page

The Run page contains controls for running the supported programs, or creating input files for these programs. This is the default page, shown when the panel appears.

Run in foreground
At the top of the page is the Run in foreground check box. When checked, the program will run synchronously in the foreground, rather than asynchronously in the background. Aside from possibly being helpful when debugging problems, it is not clear that this mode has any value.

This check box sets, and is set by, the FhForeg variable.

Out to console
When the Out to console check box is checked, the program output will be printed in the console window, i.e., the shell window from which Xic is running. It may be useful to verify that all is well by watching this output.

This check box sets, and is set by, the FhMonitor variable.

Run File
This button and adjacent text entry allows a compatible input file to be run by the inductance/resistance extraction program currently configured. The text area should contain a path to a valid input file for the configured program. The program will run, and results will appear, as for a normal extraction run.

Run Extraction
This button will dump a temporary input file, run the program, and display the results. The result file is named cellname-pid.fh_log, where cellname is the name of the current cell, and pid is the process id of the spawned process used to run the program. The file contains listings of the input file produced by the interface and the output file produced by the program.

By default, the program is run in the background. The label at the bottom of the panel will indicate that the job is running. When complete, a File Browser window containing the result file will appear. While jobs are running in the background, one can continue using Xic.

If the FhForeg variable is set, from the Run in foreground check box or with the !set command, then the program will instead run in the foreground. In this case, the result file is named cellname.fh_log, and Xic will be unresponsive until the run completes.

Dump FastHenry File
This button allows an input file to be generated, which is in a format compatible with the FastHenry program. The default name for this file is cellname.inp, where cellname is the current cell name.

FhArgs
This text entry area can be given a string, which will be included in the argument list when the program is run with the Run Extraction button. This allows specialized command line options to be provided during the run, which the user may require. This entry field is tied to the FhArgs variable.

FhDefaults This text entry allows the user to provide a string which will appear in a .DEFAULT line in the created FastHenry input file. See the FastHenry documentation for syntax and options. This entry field is tied to the FhDefaults variable.

FhFreq
This consists of three entry areas, which take the starting and ending evaluation frequencies for FastHenry runs, and the number of intermediate frequencies to evaluate. This corresponds to the .Freq specification line in FastHenry input files. The frequencies are given in hertz. If the third field in empty, then evaluation is at the specified frequencies only. This variable is tied to the FhFreq variable, which can also be set with the !set command.

Path to FastHenry
Near the bottom of the page is an entry area where the path to the FastHenry executable program can be edited. This entry area displays and sets the FhPath variable.