( ESNUG 561 Item 4 ) -------------------------------------------- [06/01/16]
Subject: 246 engineers surveyed on general SPICE use & SPICE requirements
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 of Solido DA
http://www.deepchip.com/items/0551-02.html
From: [ Amit Gupta of Solido Design ]
Hi, John,
Almost exactly 12 months ago, I shared results of the external survey Solido
had done. As a follow-up, I sponsored a similar survey for 2016.
This year, 246 designers and engineering managers responded. Below is what
they reported about their general SPICE use and SPICE requirements.
Where the questions are the same, I compare them to last year's results.
SPICE-USER DESIGN TYPES
The SPICE-user design types data is fairly consistent this year compared to
last year. The majority of designers were doing analog/mixed-signal and
full custom digital design.
2015: "Which types of design does your group do?"
Analog/Mixed-Signal: :################################ 65%
Full Custom Digital: :######################### 51%
Standard Cell: :#################### 41%
Memory: :############### 30%
RF: :############ 24%
2016: "Which types of design does your group do?"
Analog/Mixed-Signal: :################################ 63%
Full Custom Digital: :######################### 48%
Standard Cell: :#################### 37%
RF: :############ 27%
Memory: :########### 26%
Fewer designers were doing std cell, RF and memory design. We often see
central library groups, and outside foundry and IP companies now supplying
std cell libs and memory IP, so this data makes sense.
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SPICE USE BY PROCESS NODES
We asked again at which process node(s) they are designing. Below is the
shift we observed from 2015 to 2016.
Q: "At what nm process node(s) are you currently designing?"
Roughly ~20% of SPICE being used at the older >90nm nodes is because
20% of custom IC's are for things like medical devices, catalog parts,
industrial microcontrollers, base stations, military chips, etc. These
chips don't need leading edge nodes, so they use these mature nodes
because they're cheaper.
I found two big shifts of process node jumpers:
- 65nm to 40nm is like IoT and automotive chips. The other
thing that the foundries are doing is making low power 40nm
(e.g. TSMC 40LP or GF 40LP) versions of older 65nm chips.
- 28nm to 16nm & 10nm is the FinFET, high performance chips by
the big names like Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Samsung, Intel,
etc. for either mobile or high performance computing.
The other big change this year are big fabs like TSMC and GF are adding
multiple flavors of their main nodes for economic reasons (which is new).
Before TSMC had 28LP and 28HP. Now they have 28LP, 28HP, 28HPM, 28HPC,
28HPL.
Also, GlobalFoundries has been investing heavily in 22nm FD-SOI (22FDX), to
target low power chips like automotive and IoT -- which don't need FinFET
high performance -- but want the lower price of FD-SOI.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
HOW SPICE IS USED
We dove deeper to get a better understanding of how designers are using
SPICE simulators. Below are the results for the 244 respondents (91%) who
knew how their organization approached SPICE.
Q: "How does your organization run its SPICE simulators?
(with a commercial environment or as standalone?)"
This data shows 3 main groups of SPICE users.
- The AMS/custom/RF designers use a commercial SPICE environment
(52%) like Cadence ADE, Mentor BDA ACE, Synopsys Custom Compiler
to do stuff like create testbenches, measurements, device sizing,
look at sim waveforms and results.
- Memory and std cell lib designers like to run SPICE standalone
(24%) in batches to verify their cell and block netlists.
- The last 24% are big companies that have different groups doing
different custom IC tasks, so the company overall is using both
standalone SPICE and SPICE in a commercial environment.
Overall, 76% of organizations use SPICE with a commercial design environment
(e.g. Cadence Analog Design Environment), while 48% use (or also use) their
SPICE simulators standalone, using the command line to input their netlist
to the SPICE simulator.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
We also asked the designers who use a commercial design environment, whether
it was important that the simulator be provided by the same vendor that
provided their environment.
Q: "If your organization uses a SPICE simulator with an
environment, is it important that the environment
and SPICE simulator be provided by the same vendor?"
This all about lock-in. This asked the question of "if you own the SPICE
environment, how much of the SPICE simulator market will you also own?"
This data says 41% of users will choose their SPICE simulator pretty much
with less regard to speed/performance/accuracy/capacity/cost, just because
it runs tightly with their commercial environment.
- Cadence is trying to use Virtuoso ADE and Cadence Altos/Liberate
to lock-in Spectre license sales.
- Synopsys is trying to use Custom Compiler and Magma SiliconSmart
to also do this -- but it's the SiliconSmart popularity that is
driving HSPICE/FineSim sales, the new Custom Compiler is too new
to impact this.
Conversely, the popularity of Mentor's BDA AFS could be used to lock-in the
Mentor BDA ACE environment -- thus displacing Cadence or Synopsys.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Depending on how you look at it, Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor each have their
own unique best-in-class tool strategy to steal custom tool market share
from each other.
- Amit Gupta
Solido DA San Jose, CA
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Related Articles:
246 engineers surveyed on general SPICE use & SPICE requirements
246 engineers on today's SPICE use vs. their future SPICE use
And the variation part of Amit's 246 engineer SPICE survey...
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