Icarus Verilog & GTKWave

This tutorial is intended for those taking CSC258 who want to compile and test Verilog code on their personal machines without having to use Quartus. The provided commands are intended for Linux and should serve only as reference material.

Installation

The two pieces of software we need are Icarus Verilog and GTKwave both of which are open source and publicy available.

sudo apt-get install iverilog
sudo apt-get install gtkwave

Compilation

iverilog -o simple.vvp simple.v simple_tb.v

In this specific example, we are testing a Verilog module called simple.v. The test cases are contained in the file simple_tb.v, it can be named arbitrarily; although it is called moduldename_tb.v by convention. We specify our output file to be simple.vvp

Running the Simulation

vvp simple.vvp

You should have something output in the form of

VCD info: dumpfile simple.vcd opened for output.
A is 1010, B is 0011.
A is 1100, B is 0101.

Viewing in Graph Form

gtkwave simple.vcd

Once GTKWave has launched

1. locate the SST tab top-left of the screen and expand all
2. Locate the desired test case and click
3. Bottom-left of the screen should display a chart with Type and Signal
4. Drag whichever one you'd like to analyse over to the Signals tab

###Vim Mapping

function! SetupVerilogEnvironment()
	map <F5> :! iverilog -o %:r.vvp %:r.v %:r_tb.v && vvp %:r.vvp && gtkwave %:r.vcd <ENTER>
endfunction

if has("autocmd")
	autocmd Filetype verilog call SetupVerilogEnvironment()
endif

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*This is by no means a comprehensive guide, feel free to add/correct anything in this tutorial.