Slow simulation with Accelerated Waveform Viewer

Description

We have recently discovered that the 2013 editions of the McAfee® security products implement a real-time scanning method that significantly impedes Aldec simulations utilizing the Accelerated waveform/ASDB database. Our experiments show that the real time scanner implemented in the McAfee Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware module version 16.1 "scans" every single transaction that the simulation engine writes to the ASDB database, and every transaction that the accelerated waveform viewer reads from the database. The problem will show up in all versions of the Riviera-PRO simulator and in the versions of the Active-HDL simulator that have the accelerated waveform enabled in the license.

Symptoms

Affected machines will experience:

• longer start of simulation

• significantly slower simulation progress with messages "ASDB. Info: Writing data to disk. Please wait." showing in the console

• ending the simulation and closing the waveform window takes an extreme amount of time

Solution

Until McAfee addresses this issue, you can do one of the following:

• avoid upgrading to 2013 Editions of McAfee tools

  NOTE: Version 15 of the McAfee Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware module is not causing any issues.

• consider downgrading to the previous version of McAfee software

• disable real-time scanning for the time of simulation:

  1. click on Virus and Spyware Protection in the Security Center

  2. click the Real-Time Scanning link

  3. select the Turn Off button

  4. select amount of time for which you want to turn off scanning

  5. select the Turn Off button