( ESNUG 551 Item 2 ) -------------------------------------------- [06/02/15]
Subject: 317 engineers on today's SPICE use vs. their future SPICE use
> Now the CDNS/BDA lawsuit is settled and both companies' newly announced
> SPICE simulators have had 6 months to harden, for 2014 I predict the
> following shakeups in the SPICE market with...
>
> - Amit Gupta of Solido Design
> http://www.deepchip.com/items/0537-07.html
From: [ Amit Gupta of Solido Design ]
Hi, John,
Here's where our survey of 317 engineers compared today's current SPICE use
vs. the SPICE user's perception of the simulators. (I know this sounds like
marketing B.S., but perception surveys are quite helpful in seeing how an
EDA vendor is doing as compared to its rivals.)
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WHAT SPICE USERS ARE USING TODAY
Below are the relative vendor use proportions. This often differs from SPICE
market share because market share is based on the annual dollar amounts on
SPICE licenses sold. This question here is on what the SPICE users are
actually using now; not on the dollars they spent on SPICE that year.
All of Mentor's numbers include Eldo, BDA AFS, and a bit of Tanner T-Spice.
The major change is Mentor. Wally and Greg have been aggressively buying
custom IC design market share. I estimate that over the last 14 months
Mentor has grown from less than 5 percent SPICE customer use with Eldo, to
a healthy 33 percent from picking up BDA (and to a lesser degree, Tanner).
AND WHERE FUTURE SPICE SALES WILL BE
Knowing from our earlier survey question that 26% of groups will either be
evaluating or adding new SPICE simulators in the next 12 months, this SPICE
user perception data tells us where future SPICE sales will most likely be.
It's important to know that SPICE use is broken down by user segments. I
used to talk about them as these four niches:
- memory designs
- std cell libraries
- full custom digital
- pure AMS/RF
We used to break out AMS/RF from custom digital, but we're seeing that these
designers use pretty much the same tool flows -- so now I put AMS/RF/custom
digital into one merged segment.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
AMS, CUSTOM DIGITAL, RF DESIGN
Not surprisingly, Cadence is still perceived as the technology leader in
analog/mixed-signal, custom digital, and RF SPICE simulation -- with 53%
citing them as the technology leader.
I suspect this stems from the fact that Cadence Virtuoso and ADE has close
to 80% market share in the full custom and AMS design/layout tool market.
And although Synopsys has an 18% second place here, it's NOT from Aart's
Custom Designer tool -- which we are not seeing amoung the first tier
customers -- but from prior full custom SPICE market penetration by the
SNPS Avanti HSPICE and SNPS Magma FineSim SPICE simulators.
I expect Lip-Bu to keep dominating in the AMS/CUSTOM/RF SPICE niche, but
Keysight to start winning RF market share now that it has fully spun out
from Agilent, and Wally to gain with BDA AFS.
MEMORY DESIGN
Because memory cells are highly repetitive, their SPICE simulations can use
this to get far better speed/accuracy/capacity than general SPICE tools.
The other thing is memory designers are very fickle, they're always picking
the best SPICE simulator for the process and node they're on -- which is
why memory SPICE is the one to win. If you win memory, sales in the other
niches readily follow.
"SPICE is interesting in that you enter through memory; it's the
most unforgiving market there is. Zero tolerance. You gotta
have the best tool or they toss your tool out. Memory designers
have no loyalty to any SPICE vendor. This why Synopsys has 9
different SPICE simulators."
- Gary Smith during the DAC'14 Troublemakers Panel
Aart does well in memory SPICE because he acquired 6 different SPICE flavors
to offer memory designers. Magma FineSim does well, Aart buys it, and then
he keeps those FineSim users happy after the acquisition. Same with Avanti
and Nassda. But notice that SNPS only has 33% compared to CDNS 23% -- not
a big lead there -- plus 23% saw "no one" as a tech leader in memory SPICE.
The CDNS 23% here comes from buying the Altos memory characterization tools
plus their recent CDNS Spectre XPS launch (also focused on memory design.)
The fact that CDNS Spectre XPS benchmarked well against SNPS HSPICE at 16FF
in ESNUG 547 #3 shows how successful their tool is in memory design. Prior
to these two CDNS actions, I think Lip-Bu's share of memory SPICE leadership
was similar to Silvaco's small 4% number.
In addition, Wally's 5% leadership in memory SPICE today was actually 0.1%
when he only had Eldo. That 5% jump is purely from MENT buying BDA which had
launched AFS Mega targeted for memory designs 2 years ago -- not from Eldo.
The customer benchmark of BDA AFS Mega vs. SNPS Finesim Pro plus SNPS HSIM
for SRAMs in ESNUG 535 #3 confirms this.
STD CELL DESIGN
If you compare the data for memory design leadership (above) and std cell
design leadership (below) you'll see that
even though they're two distinct SPICE design niches -- almost all of the
same comments apply. SNPS leads with HSPICE and FineSim, and CDNS jumped
up from buying the Altos std cell characterization tools.
The only technical difference is memories are lots of repeat instances of
a few well designed cells. Std cell libs are a mix of many different small
"building blocks" used to make digital chips.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SNPS SPICE UNDER ATTACK
> With Synopsys annexing Magma FineSim through the recent acquisition,
> Synopsys will monopolize custom digital, memory, and std cell. Aart
> will recapture his estimated $70 million/year in lost business to
> Magma, and with Magma's history of price cutting and commoditizing
> now eliminated... all SPICE prices will go up dramatically.
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/items/0496-07.html
If you look at the SPICE Wars post in ESNUG 496 #7 that analyzed how Aart's
buying Magma would raise all SPICE prices back in 2011, what I personally
see from our own customers and from this survey is that CDNS and MENT are
taking advantage of this by aggressively going after SPICE niches that
SNPS or LAVA had earlier dominated.
Why I say this is if this survey had been done 5 years before, CDNS and MENT
would have been in 2% leadership roles in memory and std cell -- with SNPS
easily crushing both -- instead CDNS and MENT are now serious challengers
to SNPS/LAVA/Avanti/Nassda SPICE in these two niches.
The other thing that backs this is how in each SPICE niche (18%, 23%, 15%)
had said "no one" was the technology leader in that niche -- meaning that
a good portion of SPICE buyers see their next SPICE purchase being anyone's
game right now.
- Amit Gupta
Solido DA Saskatoon, Canada
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Related Articles:
317 engineers surveyed on general SPICE use & SPICE requirements
317 engineers on today's SPICE use vs. their future SPICE use
And the variation part of Amit's 317 engineer SPICE survey...
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