( ESNUG 446 Item 14 ) ------------------------------------------- [09/01/05]
Subject: Synopsys Cosmos LE Made My Job a Living Hell; IC Station Saved It
> Cosmos-LE: It's a little better than cutting rubylith I guess. I am still
> amazed today after using the tool for 6 months that anyone would have the
> balls to actually try to sell something this bad. Even though we sort of
> got it thrown in for free with all the digital tools, I still feel ripped
> off. What a piece of crap! I used tools 15 years ago that were far
> better polygon pushers.
>
> Trying to do ANYTHING with Cosmos is a major exercise in frustration.
> Even the most simple move/copy/stretch operations are aggravating. Cosmos
> lacks many of the basic polygon manipulation features that exist in other
> tools. Its SDL/pcell capabilities are also pretty primitive. Cosmos
> takes about 5-10x the amount of time to accomplish layout vs Mentor
> IC Station for example.
>
> I would like to say something good about Cosmos but nothing comes to mind.
> By the way, did I mention it crashes a lot?
>
> Most of my experience is with Mentor IC Station. To say the difference
> between the tools is night and day would be a huge understatement. It's
> like comparing a Model T to a Ferrari. All the features I took for
> granted in IC Station don't even exist in Cosmos.
>
> Bottom line, don't waste your time (or money) with Cosmos.
>
> - Robert Maxwell of Mediaworks-ISI
> from http://www.deepchip.com/items/snug04-09.html
From: John Scott <john.scott=user domain=advancedbionics pot calm>
Hi, John,
My layout experience is extensive with Mentors IC Station and about 3 months
with Synopsys Cosmos LE. I found the Cosmos tool to be unworkable. It was
so bad that the company I was working for, even though they got the tool for
free, returned the licences to Synopsys.
The most simple things to edit in Cosmos took way too many steps. My layout
time was about 10 times longer than with IC Station. Cosmos LE was very
unstable and when you would zoom in to do a move or strech, you would lose
the cursor!
The only good thing to say about Cosmos LE is that the MOS device generator
would automatically connect multiple finger devices source drain and gate.
The IC Station tool I am very familiar with. It is by far better than the
Synopsys tool. IC Station is very flexible allowing each user to layout
according to their own layout style. For any command there are 7 ways to
run it in IC Station. For example "move" in IC Station:
- you can do a windows style pulldown
- you can access a tool bar on the left side of the layout window
- you can access an edit pallet on the right side
- you can type the command in
- you can use the right mouse button to a edit menu
- you can use a stroke command
and you can use hotkeys.
For me this is what makes IC Station so powerful is that I can define
hotkeys on the fly and often load more than one command to run at a time.
It increases my productivity. The tool has device generators for diodes
caps resistors inductors and guardbands. The Cosmos tool has no
guardband generators. Also a side note, the Cosmos tool would not allow
more than 2 users to open the Milkyway data base at a time. Not good
when you have a layout designer who must wait for the engineer to go
home to be able to work and you want to hit a tapeout date!
On the verification side, the reports from Calibre I found to be more
intuitive but then I have been seeing them for many years. Hercules did
seem to be close to Calibre in what it could do and in speed, although a
little more cryptic to write rules for.
To sum it up, I am really really glad to working with a company that
uses Mentor again. The Cosmos tools was so bad, unstable and unflexible
that it made my job a pain instead of enjoyment.
- John Scott
Advanced Bionics Corp. Sylmar, CA
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