In this blog, we will cover some tips to optimize CPU, build times, and disk space when using Sigasi Visual HDL (SVH) .
1. Cache this if you can
SVH comes with an integrated cache that increases performance by reducing resource load time. Over time, it will reduce build times and CPU consumption. A few tricks when setting up the cache:
- Use the setting
sigasi.server.dataLocationto specify a directory for the cache. Note that without a location, the cache won’t work. - Use a sensible cache quota size. This is a balancing act between your project’s size and your available disk size. The default of 500MB is a good starting point.
- If you are setting up a remote server to use with Remote Development, you must ensure that each user has their own cache location to avoid corruption, since cache locations cannot be shared.
- Caches cannot be shared between VS Code instances.
2. Make sure the extension is installed only once
When setting up a remote SSH server, you want to avoid each user downloading the extension and retaining a copy of it. You can specify the location of the extensions directory by using the command line option extensions-dir. This allows every user to reuse the same client extensions.
3. Give big projects the heap space they need
We are constantly working on reducing our memory footprint, but sometimes, projects require a bigger heap size to operate at maximum performance. If a project does not have enough memory, you may experience longer build times and potentially OutOfMemoryError exceptions. You can change the maximum heap size in the setting sigasi.server.arguments. Just add or edit the argument called -Xmx<size>. For more information about this argument, refer to the documentation .
Conclusion
SVH offers a variety of ways to improve performance when it comes to CPU, memory, and disk, and we encourage you to test out tricks to find what works best for your projects in VS Code. We want you and your team to have the most comfortable (and fun!) hardware designing experience. To request a license, click here.
Do you want to try all of this at your leisure?
Install our Community Edition and start exploring all SVH has to offer!