When a designer runs NCC, and NCC finds mismatches, the NCC graphical display window pops up displaying the mismatches. The display varies from platform to platform. Below is a typical display with some essential features.

Figure9.42

The left side of the window is a tree providing an overview of the kinds of mismatches that NCC found. The right side has information corresponding to the currently selected tree node(s).

Each top-level tree node corresponds to a comparison of two cells. In the above example, the label on the top-level node indicates that the comparison that failed was between the cells: "bitslice{sch}" and "bitslice{lay}" in the library: "mipscells". If the two cells have different names or are from different libraries, then their names are shown individually. For example, "libraryA:gateA{sch} & libraryB:gateB{sch}". The number in square brackets at the right end of the cell names, in this example "[34]", is the number of mismatches.

In general, if you see a tree node with a number in square brackets, then this number is the total number of mismatches grouped under this node.

Selecting a top-level tree node displays the number of parts, wires, and ports in the compared cells in the right part of the window. For all other nodes, the right side of the window displays a list of component names arranged in different ways, as described in subsequent sections. Some components are highlightable, in which case their names are printed as blue, red, or green hyperlinks.

A top-level node has one or more subnodes. Subnodes can have the following types: Exports, Parts, Wires, Parts (hash code), Wires (hash code), Sizes, Export Assertions, Export/Global Network Conflicts, Export/Global Characteristics Conflicts, and Unrecognized Parts.

For more information on the NCC graphical user interface, see:
   Kao, Russell, Ivan Minevskiy, and Jon Lexau, "Design Notes for Electric's Network Consistency Check", Sun Microsystems Laboratories Technical Report 2006-152, January 2006.