Recovering a simulation run length when only the waveform dump survives

When the run log next to a waveform dump is gone and you need the simulated length (cycles, end time):

1. Prefer the testbench own traces: an instruction-trace Cycle column, or a tracer/manifest stop line. The simulator final "Time: N ps" line gives end time, not cycles; divide by the clock period, taken from a run with a known cycle count. 2. For one design and one dump setting, waveform bytes per cycle stayed within ~1.5% over a ~40x range of run lengths, so a known run can calibrate a size -> length ESTIMATE. Caveat: this holds only when activity is steady. A workload with phases (boot, then idle, then burst) breaks linearity, so calibrate on the same workload and label the result an estimate. 3. When searching shared hosts for dumps, use find -xdev with -prune on directories you must not touch, and run it under nice/taskset so it stays off cores reserved for timing runs.