( ESNUG 484 Item 7 ) -------------------------------------------- [02/02/10]
Subject: ( ESNUG 483 #2 ) Controversy around Calibre-Quartz benchmark
> We recently switched from Mentor Calibre to Magma Quartz DRC/LVS. ...
>
> We've run our "design" that's more than 20x larger than a normal design,
> and Quartz with Direct Read handled it, while Calibre choked. Not only
> is Quartz much faster than Calibre, but its scalability with the increase
> of CPUs uses means fast results even as our "designs" get larger.
>
> - Robert Patti
> Tezzaron Semiconductor Corp. Naperville, IL
From: Ed Lord <ed.lord=user domain=oasissales not calm>
Hi, John,
I'm the local distributor to Tezzaron Semiconductor in Illinois for their
Mentor Calibre 2001.2 license, so I was pretty surprised to see they had
used it in a benchmark against a Magma Quartz 2009 licence.
Why?
Because it was sold to them 8 years ago... without support, and that was
for a single CPU only.
At the time, performance wasn't much of a concern for Tezzaron, but if it
is now, they ought to upgrade that Calibre license. (If I apply the speed
ups in Calibre in the last 8 years to their own benchmark numbers, Calibre
would be 5x faster than Quartz on their design!) Calibre is routinely
used on the world's largest designs and it scales well on hundreds of CPUs.
I can also tell that Tezzaron is using an old copy, too, because they talk
about lack of native Tcl support... which Calibre has had since 2004 as
many of your readers will know.
If Terrazon wants to move off an antique copy of Calibre, to the fastest
performance available, we're happy to help!
- Ed Lord
Oasis Sales, Inc. Tempe, AZ
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Editor's Note: Since this questions a user benchmark, I directly contacted
Robert Patti of Tezzaron and he followed up with the following. - John
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Robert Patti <rpatti=user domain=tezzaron not calm>
Hi John,
I sent all of this as a comment to John Ferguson's "Apples-to-Apples" blog
on the official Mentor.com web site 6 weeks ago, but it was never posted.
First, my comments about Mentor support referred to the days when we still
had support. The level of support we received wasn't worth the steep price;
that's why we decided to drop support.
Second, although our version of Calibre is indeed the older one, it is the
64-bit version from 2001 running on Solaris. We confirmed our benchmark
results against Calibre 2008.3 running on Linux at a customer site. Also,
several of our customers are using 2009 versions of Calibre and they've had
the same run issues that I described, including Calibre choking.
I'm not interested in picking a fight with Mentor. However, before we went
to Magma, we asked for a temporary Calibre 2009 license so we could do this
benchmark and see whether it would address the problems we were having.
(Mentor can verify this, as they have our records.) Mentor declined to let
us evaluate Calibre 2009 and expressed no interest in helping support our
requirements. It seems we are too small a customer to warrant attention.
In contrast, Magma provides us on-going support. They fix any issues we
see, generally within 24 hours. They actively support our unusual 3D needs
and those of our numerous customers. We are glad we changed; we now have
an enthusiastic partner in our success.
I hope that this will put the matter to rest.
- Robert Patti
Tezzaron Semiconductor Corp. Naperville, IL
Sign up for the free DeepChip newsletter
Index
Next->Item
|
|
