OpenAccess Quick Start Guide

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Get started now with the OpenAccess EDA database. This guide presents an overview of how to download and install OpenAccess in preparation for application development.

Contents

1 Get Licensed

OpenAccess is licensed software. See Si2's OpenAccess License Information for instructions on what you need to do. Your legal department will need to approve this, so start this paperwork in advance.

2 Download OpenAccess

Once you have your Si2.org user ID:

  • log in to si2.org. You must allow cookies from si2.org.
  • Go to the OpenAccess download page and decide which version to download:
    • If your organization is an OpenAccess Coalition member, you can download the Coalition (Member) or General releases.
    • If you are logged in but you organization is not an OpenAccess Coalition member, you can download only the older General releases. But don't despair, the General releases are still quite useful.
    • Further, you have a choice of major release or incremental source release. The major release contains pre-built software, which is best for beginners. The incremental source release you must build yourself, which is an advanced topic not covered in this guide. Read about building OpenAccess in Installing OpenAccess after you install the documentation.
  • Download all these files:
    • Documentation files whose name begins with A. Download all of these and read them while you wait for the larger files to download.
    • oaDev. Precompiled libraries and executables for application developers are in compressed TAR files oaDev*.tar.gz. The file name also identifies the compute platform. You need only the oaDev file for your compute platform. You can skip the oaDev file if you only need to run the precompiled OpenAccess translators, but this quick start guide assumes you plan to develop applications and therefore need the oaDev file.
    • oaDoc. The OpenAccess documentation is in compressed TAR file oaDoc*.tar.gz.
    • oaInc. The installed header files are in the compressed TAR file oaInc*.tar.gz. These same header files are also in the oaSrc file below, but in oaInc, they are installed in the include/oa/ directory where your application can easily access them. Again, this guide assumes you plan to develop applications and therefore need the oaInc file.
    • oaRun. Precompiled optimized libraries and executables are in compressed TAR files oaRun*.tar.gz. As with oaDev, the file name identifies the compute platform, and you need only the oaRun file for your compute platform.
    • oaSrc. The OpenAccess source code is in compressed TAR file oaSrc*.tar.gz.

3 Install the Downloaded Files

3.1 UNIX Platforms

  • Create a directory to contain the release, like oa-22.41p004/: 
 mkdir oa-22.41p004/
  • Expand the downloaded files into the directory: 
 cd oa-22.41p004/
 tar xvfz ~/Download/oaDev_22.41p004_linux_rhel40_gcc44x.tar.gz
 tar xvfz ~/Download/oaDoc_22.41p004_all.tar.gz
 tar xvfz ~/Download/oaInc_22.41p004_all.tar.gz 
 tar xvfz ~/Download/oaRun_22.41p004_linux_rhel40_gcc44x.tar.gz
 tar xvfz ~/Download/oaSrc_22.41p004_all.tar.gz
  • Set your path to point to the wrapper scripts: 
 export PATH=/path/to/oa-22.41p004/bin:${PATH}
The function of the wrapper scripts is to determine the UNIX platform, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and launch the actual executable, like oa-22.41p004/bin/linux_rhel40_gcc44x_64/opt/oa2strm
  • As a cursory test, try running a translator application: 
 oa2strm -h
This should print out the command line options for the OpenAccess to GDSII translator.

3.2 Windows Platform

  • Use Windows Explorer to create a folder to contain the release, like oa-22.41p004
  • Use a file archival program like 7-Zip to expand all the downloaded files into the folder you created
  • OpenAccess does not come with a Windows installer, so manually add it to the Path environment variable:
    • From the Start menu, open My Computer
    • Click on View System Information
    • Select the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables
    • In the Environment Variables form, select the Path variable and click Edit
    • Add the path to the OpenAccess Windows executables, separated by semicolons. For example: 
   C:\Program Files\oa-22.41p004\bin\win32\opt;existingPathContents;
  • Dismiss all forms by clicking OK

Unlike UNIX, on Windows the application executables are launched directly, without any wrapper script.

3.2.1 Windows Debug Libraries Require Visual Studio 2005

In order to load the OpenAccess debug mode libraries in C:\path\to\openaccess\bin\win32\dbg, you must have Visual Studio 2005 installed. If not, the DLLs for your application will not load, and the reason why will be unapparent.

Cadence uses Visual Studio 2005 to compile OpenAccess. The debug mode libraries require library Microsoft.VC80.DebugCRT, which ships only with Visual Studio 2005. Therefore you have these alternatives:

  • The simplest is to use only the OpenAccess optimized libraries with your choice of Visual Studio versions. You just will not be able to step into OpenAccess with the debugger.
  • Install Visual Studio 2005 and use any of the pre-compiled libraries in the OpenAccess major release
  • Compile OpenAccess and your application all on your favorite version of Visual Studio and do whatever you like

Credit for finding the cause of this murky problem goes to Kyle Patterson of Texas Instruments.

4 Access the OpenAccess Documentation

Now that you have OpenAccess installed, you can access its excellent documentation for information on how to continue. In a web browser, open this file within the directory containing OpenAccess: 

 doc/oa/html/index.html

The OpenAccess documentation will appear:

OpenAccess documentation home page

The pages you will find most immediately useful are:

  • The Topics button at the top of the page returns you to this page
  • See Installing OpenAccess for more details about the procedure presented here, including environment variables and how to build OpenAccess from source code
  • Getting Started—A HelloWorld Example shows how to start developing OpenAccess based applications. Implement the oaObserver<oaLibDefList> observer shown here in every one of your applications.
  • The OpenAccess Release Notes explain version-to-version changes
  • The All Classes button at the top of the page links to the Doxygen style documentation for the OpenAccess API. After you start developing your application, this is the page to which you will refer the most. Bookmark it.
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