Question: What causes MVSIM to issue the ERROR 5618?

Answer:

MVSIM issues ERROR 5618 when the trigger for a supply net could not be created, because it could not establish 'complete' power supply network for the particular net. Basically, a supply net is expected to be driven by a supply port in either HDL or UPF port through c_s_n or power switches in UPF. If supply nets are left unconnected or incorrectly connected, then MVSIM can not establish its driver to perform dynamic simulation and hence ERROR 5618 is issued as follows: [MVSIM] ERROR 5618: Trigger VDDtb1 for Power Network Element VDDtb1 could not be created. In most cases, MVDBGEN would have issued a warning such as follows that could have gone unnoticed. Hence, its good practice to clean all UPF related WARNING/ERROR messages reported by MVCMP -UPF and MVDBGEN runs prior to running MVSIM/MVRC [MVDBGEN] WARNING 3568: File '/remote/MVSIM_ERROR_5618/tb.upf' , Line '11' : Supply Net 'tb/VDDtb1' is found hanging (has no connections). Skipping. ERROR 5618 can also occur when shifting top flow is employed and the power network is not driven or incomplete. If ERROR 5618 is seen and if you are running in UPF_ON_OFF=yes, then you can quickly enable unconnected_powernet_on = yes under MVSIM section of archpro.ini to qualify if power network is indeed broken. Once unconnected_powernet_on is enabled, MVSIM would switch ON all the unconnected supply nets in the design at 0 simulation time, even though there are no physical drivers to it. Hence, you would not see ERROR 5618 from MVSIM. This confirms that the network is broken in UPF. unconnected_powernet_on = yes does NOT work when UPF_ON_OFF=no.