( ESNUG 426 Item 8 ) -------------------------------------------- [03/31/04]
Subject: Nine More Japanese Letters On Mentor/Exemplar/Leonardo/Precision
> Scenario 1: Wally's Revenge
>
> Synplicity was founded by ex-Mentor synthesis gurus Ken McElvain and Andy
> Dauman. For Wally Rhines, the CEO of Mentor, it's a wee bit embarrassing
> to have his ex-employees best him in a market that Mentor used to own.
> If it turns out that Synplicity sales really did drop 31% while Mentor
> sales remained steady in FPGA synthesis, Wally gets to laugh as he watches
> Bernie Aronson, the CEO of Synplicity, do his best imitation of the
> Help-I've-Fallen-And-I-Can't-Get-Up lady. Sweet, sweet revenge....
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/gadfly/gad031204.html
From: Naoyuki Hoshi <hoshi.naoyuki=user domain=wrc.melco.co.jp>
Mr. John Cooley,
My name is Naoyuki Hoshi and I am an FPGA/ASIC designer. Here are the
comments on the Mentor synthesis tools:
- We currently use Leonardo as the main FPGA synthesis flow in
our section.
- Used for both prototyping and product. Not for ASIC.
- The major reasons we selected Leonardo were that it showed
the best evaluation results for some large designs, and that
the upgrade program to Precision Synthesis made us hope
great performance enhancements.
- Some complaints exists for Leonardo (ex: complicated GUI, the
slow runtime for some design).
- We have no comment on Precision Synthesis now because we have
not used it except the past evaluation (whose result was good).
I hope this helps.
- Naoyuki Hoshi
Mitsubishi Electric Co. Japan
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Takeharu Iwata <iwata-mail=user domain=post.pioneer.co.jp>
We are using Leonardo, FPGA Advantage, and ModelSim from 4 years ago. Our
design was with VirtexE series, next design will start for VirtexII Pro
soon. We are satisfied our design synthesis result with Leonardo, shifting
to Precision for new design. Precision has a good GUI, better than
Leonardo. Some design synthesis execute time is shorter than Leonardo.
- Takeharu Iwata
Pioneer Japan
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Kenichi Watanabe <kenichi.watanabe=user domain=motorola spot balm>
Hello John,
I was targeting Virtex-II devices, and used Xilinx's XST. Because it's
free and works well. If I targeted Stratix devices, I would chose
LeonardoSpectrum/Precision rather than Synplify. I believe that ASIC
buys prefer LeonardoSpectrum/Precision because it has many options to
apply constraints that they can do in Synopsys DC.
- Kenichi Watanabe
Motorola Japan Ltd.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Hiroyuki Urakami <hiroyuki_urakami=user domain=post.pioneer.co.jp>
Hi John-san,
At Pioneer, we have been using Mentor's Leonardo Spectrum for designing
FPGAs, and are always satisfied with their high performance and high
resolution. Precision RTL and Precision Physical will be available
soon.
- Hiroyuki Urakami
Pioneer Japan
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Tetsuya Shigeta <tetsuya_shigeta=user domain=post.pioneer.co.jp>
Hi John-san,
I have used Leonardo for many years at Pioneer, and am satisfied with both
its ease of use and quality of results. And I am also very impressed that
Precision RTL records much greater performance than Leonardo!
Our optimization is done using Precision RTL Synthesis and Synplify Pro.
Precision RTL Synthesis' performance always satisfies us better than
Synplify Pro. However, with some venders (QuickLogic), there is fault
with device selection or an output report before performance. We are
demanding that the support team in Japan fix this problem, and we are
using SynplifyPro until this problem is improved.
Furthermore, since the Xilinx legacy device (Spartan-XL, XC4000) is not
supported by Mentor's Precision, we must use Synplify Pro. We regret
that a legacy device cannot be optimized by the largest manufacturer of
synthesis.
I have a plan to add a new license of Precision Physical very soon, since
it seems that its technologies come from Mentor's challenge of utilizing
100% of each specific high-end FPGA architecture, and my team highly
appreciated their ways of R&D.
- Tetsuya Shigeta
Pioneer Japan
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Michio Ohyama <mohyama=user domain=jeol.co.jp>
Hi John-san,
We introduced Mentor's Leonardo Spectrum three years ago. Until then, we
used Synplify for FPGA synthesis.
In a comparison between Synplicity and Leonardo, we haven't seen any
significant difference. Most of our designs are VirtexIIE and Stratix.
I am thinking of using my upgrade pass from Leonardo to Precision.
I would like to mention that Mentor Tech support is prompt and helpful,
and we would like to continue to use Mentor from a support point of view.
- Michio Ohyama
JEOL Japan
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Kazuya Yamada <yamada-kazuya=user domain=jvc-victor.jp>
Dear John-san,
I am a longtime user at JVC of Mentor's synthesis from Core/Galileo. And
I don't use Synopsys and Synplicity.
The first time I used Core, the ease of using of the tool impressed me.
I pushed only one button, the choice of parameter (area/speed) was
selected and I got the most suitable code for Altera.
I think that the usability is not different with the newest version.? I am
satisfied with the usage feeling of this tool.
- Kazuya Yamada
JVC Japan
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Masayuki Watanabe <watanabemsy=user domain=jae.co.jp>
Dear John-san,
Our company (JAE) is performing FPGA design. We are designing by VHDL text
or HDL Designer Series of Mentor.
Optimization is done using Precision RTL Synthesis and Synplify Pro.
With regards to "Precision RTL Synthesis", its performance always satisfies
us better than Synplify Pro. However, with some venders (QuickLogic), there
is fault with device selection or an output report before performance.
We are asking for the resolution of this problem from the Japan support
team, and are using Synplify Pro until this fault is improved. Furthermore,
since the legacy device (Spartan-XL, XC4000) of Xilinx is not supported by
Precision, we use SynplifyPro. We regret that a legacy device cannot be
optimized in Precision.
- Masayuki Watanabe
JAE Engineering Japan
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Kenji Ikeda <ikeda=user domain=ipflex spot balm>
Dear John,
Currently we own several FPGA synthesis tools and Leonardo Spectrum is one
of them. It seems to me that Leonardo has bad reputation among others in
terms of performance, but we observed even better outcome in our projects.
Our FPGA use is mainly for large ASIC prototyping, where the gate count
is roughly 1M - 10M gates. The key points for an FPGA synthesis tool
include:
1) Tool's maturity
2) Shorter TAT
3) Batch operation
I would like to describe more about each area.
1) Tool's maturity is something to do with the stability, no illegal
termination is allowed such as signal caught, and wide HDL coverage is
important too. In our environment, we have never observed illegal
termination of LeonardoSpectrum, while other synthesis tools ended up
with illegal termination due to the code parsing problem, and this was
not one time, but multiple times.
2) It is true Leonardo Spectrum has a longer run time if you really try
to get the best quality. But most importantly, Leonardo Spectrum allows
trade-offs of the quality and run time. One of our experiences shows
Leonardo Spectrum took only 3 hours while other tool took 6 hours when
we ran Leonardo Spectrum in a "run time performance"-conscious setting.
We used Pentium 4, 3.06Ghz with 4GB memory configuration, and the
target device was Altera EP20K1500EFC33. Of course we ran Quartus II
after synthesis, and it took another 3 hours. It is a MUST capability
to be able to do the quality / run time tradeoff, in order to have a
debug process at least once per day.
3) In our project, the HDL source files are to be modified more than
twice per day. It is quite important to automate and simplify the
process in a batch mode. Leonardo Spectrum allows both interactive
mode and batch mode regardless the license type (node locked or
floating), while the other synthesis tool does not allow batch mode
with the node locked license.
I would say that some other synthesis tool users would point out that
this is a kind of uncommon case, but as the FPGA devices get larger and
larger, as more people face the same design challenges, I'm pretty
confident those users will definitely choose Leonardo Spectrum.
- Kenji Ikeda
IP Flex Corporation Japan
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