( ESNUG 376 Item 10 ) ------------------------------------------- [08/29/01]
Subject: ( DAC 01 #2 ) We Now Use Synchronicity Instead Of ClearCase
> THANKS, BUT NO THANKS: This was the second most disliked catagory of
> "EDA" tools (behind C/C++ based design). I got a lot of letters for
> engineers saying that they didn't need commercial Design Colaboration
> tools and that "CVS, SCCS, and RCS work quite well, thank you". After
> that, a lot of people complained about Syncronicity and they liked LSF;
> but thought quite openly of using the free Sun tool that does the same
> thing LSF does.
From: Wayne Kohler <wkohler@agere.com>
Hi John,
I work in a group that develops, maintains, and deploys Cadence libraries,
custom SKILL code, and extraction/verification decks. We had previously
been using ClearCase, this was not working out very well for us for
several reasons:
- Required modifcation of client workstations (installation of mvfs)
- Slow performance (it literally took days to check in large hierarchies!)
- No option for recursive checkins (wrote custom perl code which generated
massive cleartool scripts)
- No "built-in" knowledge of Cadence co-managed file sets, managed via
ad-hoc scripts
- Not easy to support multi-user/multi-site development teams
- Not a very "user-friendly" or intuitive tool
Don't get me wrong, ClearCase is not a bad tool, it was just not the proper
fit for our needs. It got to the point where it was more of a hindrance
than a help to us.
We then conducted an evaluation of the Synchronicity DesSync 3.0 beta, and
based upon the results of our evaluation, it was a no-brainer decision to
make the switch. The benefits of the Synchronicity tools:
- Web based client/server architecture
- supports multi-user/multi-site development teams
- doesn't require modification of client machines (e.g. mvfs for ClearCase)
- intuitive GUI interface (DesSync)
- command line based interfaces for "power users" (Tcl and shell)
- built-in knowledge of Cadence library/cell/cellview objects
- GUI interface for Virtuoso/Composer (DesignSync DFII)
We set up a development environment supporting three sites, each remote site
having a local mirror which is incrementally populated via cron jobs. Each
developer populates his workspace with links to the mirror. This emulates
the VOB/view model that we had with ClearCase.
Of course, no tool is perfect, and we have had some hiccups, but I have found
the Synchronicity support to be exceptional.
- Wayne Kohler
Agere Systems Allentown, PA
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