X-Amin provides facilities to manage both Designs and Libraries. Although both Designs and Libraries are composed of RTL files, the way X-Amin uses these resources are different.

Designs

Designs within X-Amin are used to combine namespaces (modules, tasks, etc) into a logical grouping or hierarchy. Designs are useful when multiple versions of the same design need to exist in X-Amin or when multiple namespaces with the same name need to be processed. In these cases, separate Designs can be created so that name conflicts do not occur.

A Design is created or added-to whenever a new HDL file is read into X-Amin. In GUI mode, the Read Dialog, shown below, contains an entry box for the name of the Design. If no Design name is specified, the default design name <Default> is used.

In command-line mode, designs are defined using the -design command-line option:

xamin: read -design designA fifo.v

Care must be exercised to ensure that related components are entered into the same Design. Namespaces within one Design are totally separate from namespaces in other Designs. If a component named 'top' instantiates a component 'child', and they are contained in separate Designs, X-Amin will not be able to link the two.

When executing commands through command-line entry, a namespace can be uniquely identified by prepending the Design name followed by a colon to the namespace name. If the namespace is in the <Default> design, then just the colon is used.

xamin: flow designA:big_fifo
xamin: flowchart :controller		# <Default> Design

 

Libraries

Libraries are typically used to group low-level components which are used in multiple designs. Components are added to a library by reading an entire directory of HDL files, unlike Designs where namespaces are added one file at a time.

Components within a library cannot be selected, viewed or accessed in any other way. However, when a design is linked, needed components are copied from the Library into the Design, where they can be examined and used like any other component.