Verilog Attributes

This is a description of the various attributes that the Icarus Verilog tools understand. The attributes are attached to objects using the “(* … *)” syntax, which is described by the Verilog LRM.

Attributes that start with “ivl_” are Icarus Verilog specific are are probably ignored by other tools.

Optimizations

• ivl_do_not_elide (snapshot 20140619 or later)

  This applies to signals (i.e. reg, wire, etc.) and tells the optimizer to not elide the signal, even if it is not referenced anywhere in the design. This is useful if the signal is for some reason only accessed by VPI/PLI code.

Synthesis

• ivl_synthesis_cell

  Applied to a module definition, this tells the synthesizer that the module is a cell. The synthesizer does not descend into synthesis cells, as they are assumed to be primitives in the target technology.

• ivl_synthesis_off

  Attached to an “always” statement, this tells the synthesizer that the statement is not to be synthesized. This may be useful, for example, to tell the compiler that a stretch of code is test-bench code.