Cross-Probing Between Parent and Child Designs - 2025.2 English - UG906

Cross-probing between the dataflow design and the parent design might be necessary for several reasons:

• Cross-probing the parent netlist to access details that are trimmed from the dataflow netlist, such as:
  • Cells that were removed
  • The number of pipeline stages between key placement cells
  • The placement of cells not available in the dataflow netlist
• Certain analyses are not supported in the dataflow viewer, including:
  • Timing reports
  • Congestion analysis using report_design_analysis

Cell cross-probing is the most effective method to do this. Select a cell in one design and switch to the other design. Net correlation between the parent and dataflow designs is typically not possible because net names often change during netlist generation.

When cross-probing from the dataflow design to the parent netlist, all leaf cells in the dataflow viewer exist in the parent netlist. Because the dataflow netlist is a subset of the parent netlist, this direction of cross probing is usually successful.

Avoid cross‑probing from the parent netlist to dataflow design using leaf cells like registers or LUTs, as they aren't present in the dataflow netlist. Instead, use hierarchical cells or leaf cells such as BlockRAMs UltraRAMs, DSPs or other advanced primitives.

Use the following instructions to switch between designs:

1. Use the Design Switch icon at the top of the screen.
2. Click the icon to switch quickly between the parent design and the last used dataflow design.
   • The icon becomes available only after you create the dataflow design.
   • The icon changes depending on the switch direction:
     • denotes switching to the DFV
     • denotes switching from the DFV