EDK + Modelsim simulation : Memory allocation failure

Dear

When I simulate one EDK project (with multi-processors), Modelsim
reports an error "Memory allocation failure".

I tested the EDK project with 6 microblazes and it was okay.

Now I am trying to simulate the EDK project with 12 Microblaze.

What I did was
1. Implement the system using EDK.

In Modelsim,
2. compile "system.vhd" and "system_init.vhd"
3. compile "testbench"
4. Load "testbench" (configuration with BRAM initialization) with SDF
file.

In step 4, following error occurred:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# ** Error: system.vhd(681006): (vopt-4) ****** Memory allocation
failure. *****
# Please check your system for available memory and swap space.
# ** Error: system.vhd(681006): (vopt-4) ****** Memory allocation
failure. *****
# Please check your system for available memory and swap space.

voptk.exe - application error
The exception unknown software exception (0xc00000fd) occurred in the
application at location 0x77c3011e
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

My windows machine has 4GB RAM. I think 4GB is more than enough.

Does anyone have this experience?

On Nov 21, 12:00 pm, Pasacco <pasa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear
>
> When I simulate one EDK project (with multi-processors), Modelsim
> reports an error "Memory allocation failure".
>
> I tested the EDK project with 6 microblazes and it was okay.
>
> Now I am trying to simulate the EDK project with 12 Microblaze.
>
> What I did was
> 1. Implement the system using EDK.
>
> In Modelsim,
> 2. compile "system.vhd" and "system_init.vhd"
> 3. compile "testbench"
> 4. Load "testbench" (configuration with BRAM initialization) with SDF
> file.
>
> In step 4, following error occurred:
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> # ** Error: system.vhd(681006): (vopt-4) ****** Memory allocation
> failure. *****
> # Please check your system for available memory and swap space.
> # ** Error: system.vhd(681006): (vopt-4) ****** Memory allocation
> failure. *****
> # Please check your system for available memory and swap space.
>
> voptk.exe - application error
> The exception unknown software exception (0xc00000fd) occurred in the
> application at location 0x77c3011e
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My windows machine has 4GB RAM. I think 4GB is more than enough.
>
> Does anyone have this experience?



Are you using a 32 or 64 bit version of Windows? If you are using a 32
bit version, you are not going to get to use all 4GB. By default, 32
bit Windows will only give a program up to 2GB. There is a setting
that you can put in the boot.ini file that will let a program use up
to 3 GB in Windows XP Pro. Search the Xilinx answers database for
"Windows 3 GB" and you will get instructions on how to set it.

Regards,

John McCaskill

Thank you for comment.
My 32-bit windows machine has actually 3GB of RAM space.
I had no problem to implement the system with EDK.

The "memory allocation problem" occurred when I tried to run "Post PAR
simulation" in Modelsim.
SDF file size is 29MB. The system contains 12 MicroBlaze and totally
125 BRAMs.
It seems that 29MB of SDF file and 12 MicroBlazes are too much for
Modelsim.

If anyone has experience to "simulate (relatively) large system",
please let me know.

Pasacco wrote:
> The "memory allocation problem" occurred when I tried to run "Post PAR
> simulation" in Modelsim.
> SDF file size is 29MB. The system contains 12 MicroBlaze and totally
> 125 BRAMs.
> It seems that 29MB of SDF file and 12 MicroBlazes are too much for
> Modelsim.

That should not be a problem. I have simulated with Modelsim designs
that have 2+Gbyte SDFs and hundreds of big memories. And those
simulations needed about 3G of memory with Modelsim-SE.

Netlist simulations are usually quite hard to get going. Why do you even
need them? RTL-simulations + STA should usually be enough, unless
synthesis bug is suspected or some error in STA scripts.

At ASIC side netlist simulations are more common, but there the errors
also cost millions of dollars. I consider netlist simulations to be
aid for STA script verification, if formal tools for that are not
available for the user.

> If anyone has experience to "simulate (relatively) large system",
> please let me know.

You could try without vopt, just add -novopt to the vsim command line.
It seems that vopt is running out of memory, and that is the
optimizer before simulations. I have been more successful with the old
-fast flow especially for big netlists.

--Kim

> You could try without vopt, just add -novopt to the vsim command line.
> It seems that vopt is running out of memory, and that is the
> optimizer before simulations. I have been more successful with the old
> -fast flow especially for big netlists.

Actually i did wish to obtain VCD file.
Using -novopt option, "memory failure" message disappeared, for EDK
project with 12 MicroBlazes.
Now I can proceed, for even larger system.
Thanks Kim