Hardware and Software Requirements

This section provides hardware, software, and file system requirements. The workstation on which you install the latest version and all client workstations must meet these requirements.

Two sets of requirements are provided: minimum and recommended. Meeting the minimum requirements lets you:

• Install and license your product
• Run product tutorials or other sample designs
• Create and execute a medium-size design
• Secure hotline support

In addition, meeting the recommended requirements allows you to do everything possible with the minimum requirements, plus:

• Create and execute a large design with the operating performance stated in product literature.

System Configuration Checking Tool

The System Configuration Checking Tool is available for Linux platforms. Use it to verify that a workstation on which you want to install the product meets the minimum hardware and software requirements, including operating system version, memory, swap space, and patch requirements.

Graphic Card Requirements for Desktop Workstations

For screen resolutions greater than 1600x1200 (including multiple monitor setups), the minimum size of graphics memory should be at least 64Mbytes per 1600x1200 screen. If this requirement is not met, the maximum number of Virtuoso windows in use, and their performance gets significantly reduced. For higher resolutions, the Video Memory should be increased.

The Xserver should not have any artificial memory limit set if the Xserver is installed on the client side of a client-server configuration. An artificial memory limit can reduce performance and window capacity.

On some thin client platforms, such as the Citrix, the Xredner extension of Xserver may face some issues while displaying halos and transparent shapes correctly. You can use the following shell environment variable to disable this Xrender extension.

setenv CDS_DISABLE_XRENDER_GRAPHICS true

XResource Requirements

If the initial allocated X server resource count is less than 2 million, significant performance impact may be felt when the X server needs to recycle these resources. Smaller values, such as 1M or 512K can cause display issues. When this happens, a warning is added to the CDS.log file. Additionally, during runtime, if there is an error in X server, Virtuoso checks and reports the X resources consumed by all clients running at that moment on Xserver. Information regarding the top five users of X client is also added to the CDS.log file. This information helps check if the error is related to X resource.

Network Requirements

Good network performance is crucial to a good user experience with Virtuoso. This is particularly important when a user is remotely displaying Virtuoso from a server farm machine onto a local desktop.

There are two major aspects to network performance:

• High network bandwidth is important to sustain high data volume operations such as “redraw” of a chip level layout.
• Low network latency is important for good interactive experience and avoiding issues such as lagging mouse cursor. Virtuoso can tolerate up to 150ms of latency, but Cadence recommends that it stays lower.

Linux Requirements

These are the hardware requirements for Linux desktop:

These are the hardware requirements for Linux server:

These are the software requirements for Linux:

Updating Patches for Linux

Cadence recommends that you update your workstations to the platform patches listed at:

Recommended platform patches for systems running Cadence products

Alternatively, go through Cadence Online Support (COS):

1. Log on to Cadence Online Support.
2. On the home page, click Software – Computing Platforms. The Computing Platforms web page is displayed.
3. In the Computing Platforms section, click Recommended patches for systems running Cadence products.

Run the checkSysConf script to verify that you have all the patches required for this release.

Related Topics

Cadence Online Support

System Configuration Checker (checkSysConf)