( ESNUG 427 Item 4 ) -------------------------------------------- [04/14/04]
Subject: ( ESNUG 425 #5 ) Neolinear Rebutts Aart's Open Access Stance
> Open Access is a database project being done by Cadence and some of its
> customers. Currently, it has virtually no tape-outs, no data, and almost
> no EDA tools running natively, including Cadence's tools. ... We believe
> that it's important to provide our customers w/ strong interoperability,
> so we are participating with Si2 in the Golden Gate Working Group to
> build bridges between Milkyway and Open Access.
>
> - Aart de Geus, CEO
> Synopsys, Inc. Mountain View, CA
From: Bogdan Arsintescu <bogdan=user domain=neolinear spot calm>
Hi John,
I wanted to write to you few weeks ago on Neolinear's experience with
OpenAccess database. The news that Cadence acuires Neolinear caught me
in the middle of editing this message. After presenting our ideas at the
OA conference (http://si2.org/oaconf2004/neolinearpaper.pdf) I have decided
that our experience with OA as an independent company is worth sharing.
As a small EDA vendor, once Neolinear made the decision to put all our
products into one flow and one database, we had to thoroughly investigate
the most effective way to do it. It was a tough decision. Open Access
(OA) was an unknown before we started, and to use it, we had to move away
from our own in-house database development.
It took us 2 months evaluate OA, and about 6 months ago we decided to
use it as our in-memory database, in the hope that it would save us of
time in developing and building a correct database. I can only comment
on OA's use for analog/custom products, and have no direct expertise in
its suitability for digital design.
1. In terms of database objects, OA is more modern and flexible than
Cadence's own CDBA. It is also faster for native development.
2. Neolinear is using OA mostly for data manipulation in memory versus
storing it to disk. This provides a fast, flexible way for us to
develop our applications. The way we use OA, database speed is not
a critical factor, so we didn't run tests on the speed aspect.
3. OA has state-of-the-art parametric cells (Pcells), which allows users
to define their own device behavior. It is easy for us to open
the database for users for devices as required by a custom design.
4. The Si2 website has an open place to post OA questions, problems,
and bugs. The user and support community are surprisingly fast in
responding -- they tend to respond to each other within one day of
posting a question or problem.
5. Coming from the analog world, there is of course always something
incremental that we would like to see added. For example, I would
like to see object symmetry as a native object in the database.
However, we were able to create an extension to achieve this,
which met our needs.
6. Ultimately our goal is to get Open Access data from other tools and
work with it natively. E.g. take a Composer schematic, size it,
create a layout for it and get DIVA extraction data or LVS data
and re-analyze the circuit.
7. I wanted to note that for our framework, a database doesn't have to
be 'proven by tape out', since we're using the database only for
in-memory data processing. The OA code quality has been very good.
Our native development work is actually going faster than expected. At
this point we found that it has taken us only half the development time
versus building our own database. Our plan now was to have all of
Neolinear products on OA.
Seeing semiconductor companies such as HP, LSI Logic and Philips at the
ICCAD OA forum last year is what gave us the confidence to 'bet' on our
customers adopting OA and us operating natively on OA. I believe that
Open Access is here to stay.
- Bogdan Arsintescu
Neolinear/Cadence San Jose, CA
Editor's Note: While I respect your right to speak up on the adoption of
Open Access, Bogdan, your letter can't address OA's popularity or lack
of popularity because Neolinear has been grooming itself for over a year
to be acquired by Cadence. Where are the actual end users clamoring for
Open Access use? Where are the EDA companies not trying to be acquired
by Cadence who are crafting OA interfaces? Once we hear from them, we'll
know where Open Access adoption currently stands. (And those under a
court order to support Open Access, like Mentor, don't count.) - John
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