( ESNUG 483 Item 5 ) -------------------------------------------- [11/30/09]
From: [ Beaker of the Muppets ]
Subject: We swapped Dassault (Synchronicity) DesignSync for IC Manage
Hi, John,
Anonymous, please.
We switched from Dassault (Synchronicity) DesignSync to IC Manage software
for our mixed signal (digital and analog) designs about a year ago. Why
we swapped was mostly due to:
1. Dassault's workspace data instability. IC Manage has a "have list"
of files in the client, which are stored in the server. If your
workspace is lost, it can recreate the files. DesignSync doesn't
do this, so if your workspace is lost, your information is lost.
2. Speed of our design releases. With DesignSync, it took us several
hours to tag all the files and update the mirrors at sites around
the world. IC Manage's equivalent process takes less than an hour.
We have now taped out 3 designs with IC Manage. We use it for hardware,
verification and test; and it has increased our productivity tremendously.
With DesignSync we had symbolic links to mirrors, while The IC Manage has a
pull model static workspace. By "pull model" I mean that the user decides
when to update or "sync" files. The files are static, not changing, unless
the user wants them to. I would estimate IC Manage's workspace approach
saved us 7-8 man-weeks in the last 9 months. Additionally, creating
releases with IC Manage saved us an additional 14 work days.
IC Manage is much faster than DesignSync for standard command line
operations such as checking files in and out or getting file histories.
Checking in/out a collection 500 kb of files takes from .25 to 6 secs in
IC Manage. The same operation in DesignSync would take 30 to 120 secs.
Additionally, IC Manage has "atomic" operations, where check-ins of
multiple files are guaranteed to be submitted together or IC Manage GDP
rolls it back to you. This is a huge benefit as we no longer have to wonder
what happened if a check-in failed.
DesignSync's biggest weakness is it sets up a workspace as symbolic links.
With DesignSync you use symbolic links to mirrors - this combined with a
multi-site project led to the data shifting underneath us. This approach
may work fine for a small, centrally located design team but was a
nightmare for our large, distributed design team.
What we found switching to IC Manage:
- Project Manager for the project lead to set up and creating complex
configurations. -- Seems to work well.
- Configuration Driven Flow, with template driven workspaces. -- Worked
OK, though we're still trying to find an elegant way to separate our
behavioral models from the rest of the Cadence Opus database. We have
our digital Verilog files inside our Cadence libraries. Our digital
guys want to access just that portion and not the rest of the data.
- Component based modules for design assembly and reusability. -- All of
our designs are component based. It's easy to assemble a group of
component blocks together to make a whole part in IC Manage. We do
this with a series of Project Manager commands.
- Derivative Management: Bi-directional integration history which does
traceability. -- This is good. We have done a handful of branches
so far. The challenging part is setting up a flow for users to follow.
IC Manage needs to improve the responsiveness of their Project Manager GUI.
It's fine when running from the server, but slow when running from a remote
site. This is because it uses a MySQL database, which is slow over long
latency connections. (I never used Synchronicity GUI, so I can't compare
the two.) IC Manages says that they will be writing a new interface that
keeps the MySQL transactions local, but I haven't seen it yet.
A couple of other features I requested were:
- a way to toggle between released versions of a file or directory to
the mainline version, and
- a way to trim a configuration to make it user-based for instance,
removing layout data from an RTL user's workspace.
IC Manage engaged us in quite a lot of discussion to make sure that these
wouldn't enable poor revision control practices or lead to any pitfalls in
the future. Once fully agreed upon, it took them 2 weeks to implement.
My group was the first to switch over from DesignSync to IC Manage. Our
CAD group had a 4 hour training that we attended. We then set up an
internal wiki to fill in any gaps in the training and for new learning. I
estimate it took our average engineer 1 day to become competent and maybe
a week to become proficient.
My experience with IC Manage's support has been excellent. It's generally
less than 1 hour from the time I file an issue before someone responds.
I never interacted with anyone at Dassault directly so I cannot comment on
their support.
- [ Beaker of the Muppets ]
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