ModelSim SE User's Manual - Electrical and Computer Engineering

PLI/VPI tracing
The purpose of tracing files
Invoking a trace
Syntax
Arguments
The foreign interface tracing feature is available for tracing PLI and VPI function calls.
Foreign interface tracing creates two kinds of traces: a human-readable log of what
functions were called, the value of the arguments, and the results returned; and a set of
C-language files that can be used to replay what the foreign interface code did.
PLI/VPI tracing UM-599
The purpose of the logfile is to aid you in debugging PLI or VPI code. The primary purpose
of the replay facility is to send the replay files to MTI support for debugging co-simulation
problems, or debugging PLI/VPI problems for which it is impractical to send the PLI/VPI
code. We still need you to send the VHDL/Verilog part of the design to actually execute a
replay, but many problems can be resolved with the trace only.
To invoke the trace, call vsim (CR-373) with the -trace_foreign argument:
vsim
-trace_foreign [-tag ]
Specifies one of the following actions:
Value Action Result
1 create log only writes a local file called
"mti_trace_"
2 create replay only writes local files called
"mti_data_.c",
"mti_init_.c",
"mti_replay_.c" and
"mti_top_.c"
3 create both log and replay
-tag
Used to give distinct file names for multiple traces. Optional.
ModelSim SE User’s Manual