As I rebuild the tests for the latest archive YGREC8_VHDL.20200815.tgz, I find a weird behaviour : the last test of the TAP takes what feels like ages to complete.

The usual procedure, after you decompress the archive, is to run the script ./test_units.sh which will ensure everything is OK (tools, files, regression tests and so on). Self-tests are run, one after another, and I don't use a makefile because it tends to obfuscate things. If I wanted to use all the CPU I could parallelise some parts but for now, I don't run ALL the possible tests, often because they are pointless. There are various versions of the same unit and some are not relevant.

For the TAP, I have the "behavioural" version of the Gray6s counter, and the "tiles" version, both work as intended. The test.sh script works nicely, with behavioural completing in no time, while the Tiles takes 1/2s. But it appears that the Tiles version has some unexpected side-effects when used along with the MUX64 and I can't find why. test_readback takes more than 7s to complete ! After tweaking the order of the initialisation lines, that time is halved but the 3.5s is still too much for doing nothing (I tried to find where/how that time was wasted but it still eludes me). I want the whole script to run fast and smoothly, I'm not running an exhaustive test but thorough enough that one can be confident to explore the rest of the options with a working system.

For now the solution is to run the piso_order and test_readback programs with the behavioural counter. I suspect is could be an obscure VHDL thing with the "discrete" R/S latch of the resynch circuit but I can't be sure yet. Anyway the purpose is to run decently fast simulations and the Tiles version is not required at that point, as long as the behaviour matches with the higher-level description.

Apparently the gates library adds some significant overhead when the number of gates increases. The TAP simulates faster when the "simple" build is chosen, without the fancy stats stuff. However regeneration of the library would take almost as much time as running the system with its about 100 gates. A tiles-less version is chosen for the TAP's first tests, but other options are possible (commented out in the scripts). Behavioural simulation is fast enough anyway in the first checks. More detailed simulations can be performed later...

The archive is re-uploaded and the ./test_units.sh script completes in < 11s.

Oh, it just dawns on me that I could compile the "simple" gates library in a different directory, with the same name, and select the version by the directory path... This is now explained in Abnormal initialisation time and workaround. and the archive is updated with the new "dual style" system.