Details about the VPI Routine Library

Summary

The VPI routines in the PLI standard provide a simple, yet powerful, way to access what is happening in a Verilog simulation. The VPI routines provide this access by treating Verilog HDL constructs as objects, and using handles to reference these objects.

The VPI object diagrams serve as the primary documentation on the relationships of one object to another. The diagrams also document every property that is available for each object, such as names and vector sizes. Using the object diagrams, it is possible to traverse from any point in a Verilog design hierarchy to any other point in the hierarchy.

Previous chapters introduced a number of routines from the VPI library. This chapter has presented more details on most of the VPI routines in the library. The next chapter will present the VPI routines which are used to read and modify logic values and delay values. Chapter 6 presents synchronizing PLI applications with activity occurring within a simulation. These chapters include several complete examples of PLI applications which use the VPI library of routines.