This PR changes the wave dump in Patmos to use FST files instead of VCD files. FST files are a compressed database, drastically reducing the size of the files generated, at the cost of having to decompress the files when viewing in GTKWave. I found that simulating the 4-core processor for 3 secs generated a 300MB VCD file, but only a 10MB FST file.
Note that the cost of using FST files is that it takes some time to fetch the data each time a signal is added to the wave view in GTKWave. Perhaps a toggle can be added to select between FST and VCD? I don't know enough about the Verilator / Patmos build process to tell right away.
This PR changes the wave dump in Patmos to use FST files instead of VCD files. FST files are a compressed database, drastically reducing the size of the files generated, at the cost of having to decompress the files when viewing in GTKWave. I found that simulating the 4-core processor for 3 secs generated a 300MB VCD file, but only a 10MB FST file.
Note that the cost of using FST files is that it takes some time to fetch the data each time a signal is added to the wave view in GTKWave. Perhaps a toggle can be added to select between FST and VCD? I don't know enough about the Verilator / Patmos build process to tell right away.