( ESNUG 546 Item 4 ) -------------------------------------------- [01/15/15]
Subject: User asks on Pyxis, SNPS Custom Designer, alternatives to Virtuoso
> - USER QUESTION
>
> "I noticed that the Pyxis custom router is still listed on the
> Mentor web site. Is it still being used? If yes, by whom?"
>
> - an Anon EDA User
> http://www.deepchip.com/items/0542-09.html
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ Inquiring Minds ]
To: [ John Cooley ]
Hi, John,
Did you get any replies to my earlier Pyxis request?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ John Cooley ]
To: [ Inquiring Minds ]
Nope. Nothing.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ Inquiring Minds ]
To: [ John Cooley ]
I need to give a report to my boss about what Virtuoso alternatives
there are on the market. Could you do me a favor and write what
you know about Pyxis for me? You know these little EDA companies
really well, so it shouldn't be difficult for you.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ John Cooley ]
To: [ Inquiring Minds ]
Sure. You've given me lots of news tips. Here you go:
Company: Pyxis Technology
Product: Nexus Route
Founders: PT Patel, Sharad Mehrota, Joe Rahmay -- all ex-IBM/Sun guys
Founded: 2004. Sold to MENT in Oct. 2010
VCs: CMEA Capital, KT Venture Group, Formative Ventures, Austin Ventures
VC funding: $25 million est. Sold to MENT for $5 million est.
Nexus Route first started out as a digital DFM SoC router. Early digital
customers 2006 to 2008 were TI, IDT, and Marvell. They taped out a few
~1 M instance digital chips using Nexus Route.
Since it could handle complex constraints exceptionally well -- and it was
felt that the digital routing market was too crowded at the time, Pyxis
morphed Nexus Route into being a full custom router by around 2009.
A typical digital router in 2009 could constrain 10% to 15% of nets; the
advantage was Nexus Route could constrain 75% to 85% of nets (different
widths, different spacing, mutiple layers, different power domains, etc.)
In addition, Nexus Route could handle chip hierarchy without the need for
abstraction layers -- you could see from transistors all the way up to the
top level -- effectively everything looked flat to the router while still
remaining hierarchical for the user. Constraints propagated throughout
your chip's hierachy.
For a layout env, Nexus Route was integrated inside Springsoft Laker.
Since Pyxis couldn't get 4th round VC funding, it sold to Mentor in 2010.
Already $25 million in, their VCs sold for $5 million to cut their losses.
Also by 2010, Synopsys had lost $100 million building a Virtuoso clone with
its Custom Designer tool -- which failed to take any market share from CDNS.
 
Rather than repeat this Custom Designer failure, Wally and Greg scooped up
Pyxis to beef up their MEMs-centric polygon tweaking IC Station back into
traditional full custom IC design. Why IC Station is MEMs oriented is
because it can do stuff like all-angle rotations, magnifications, object
arrays -- which MEMs designers like and Virtuoso can not easily do. (Keep
in mind that MEMs chips are typically microphones, pressure sensors, print
heads, accelerometers, gyroscopes, etc. -- i.e. silicon that often has
curvilinear shapes placed at odd non-orthonginal angles -- which Virtuoso
struggles greatly with.) Expanding IC Station beyond MEMs is where Wally
and Greg see their growth coming.
My best guess is Pyxis IC Station is used by 100+ small MEMs companies who
names most engineers wouldn't know. Four exceptions are HP Inkjet, On Semi,
Knowles, and Freescale -- after that it's all small no-name companies.
The latest rumors I've heard is they have Ed Petrus, former head of R&D at
Ciranova, leading a team of Russian mathematicians and coders to create an
automated transister-level placer simular to what Helix did at Ciranova.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ John Cooley ]
To: [ Inquiring Minds ]
P.S. Would you mind if I put this thread up on DeepChip? I put
more work into that write-up than I had planned. I'd like
to reuse it if that's OK.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: [ Inquiring Minds ]
To: [ John Cooley ]
Not a problem as long as I remain anonymous. I told my boss you wrote
this part. He said good research.
You wrote that Custom Designer failed in 2010. That was 5 years ago.
Is that still true now? We can't find any Custom Designer users
except for some Synopsys press releases on the Synopsys web site.
Do you have any independent user assessments of Custom Designer?
Is anyone big using it for production full custom design?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Join
Index
Next->Item
|
|
