( ESNUG 584 Item 1 ) -------------------------------------------- [06/15/18]
Subject: SCOOP -- Sawicki to ambush Cadence/Synopsys PnR in-design DRC tools
TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY: At CDNlive'17 last year, Anirudh ambushed Mentor
Calibre DRC/LVS (Joe Sawicki's home turf) with his Pegasus launch:
... just to
witness some vague "big announcement" that Anirudh was making at his
CDNlive'17 keynote address. Here's what the engineer sitting next to me said:
"Well, it's not every day that you get to see two normally friendly
neighbors, who've gotten along very nicely for the past 20 years,
suddenly break out into a MTV Celebrity Deathmatch."
That engineer was right. In digital PnR, Anirudh's Innovus has taken
marketshare away from Aart's ICC2 fiasco -- especially in the sub-28nm
FinFET nodes -- so it was only a matter of time before Anirudh would make a
play on Sawicki's Calibre DRC/LVS empire.
And this Pearl Harbor timing was perfect. Right when MENT is going through
the shock of being acquired by Siemens, CDNS launches Pegasus. Ouch!
For Anirudh, this is expansion. For Sawicki, this is To The Death.
- from Anirudh's 19 jabs at Sawicki's Calibre with Pegasus
REVENGE OF THE SAWICKI: With DAC'18 now coming up in 10 days, it looks like
it's now Sawicki's turn to ambush Anirudh's home turf.
One of my spies tipped me on this on the Mentor DAC'18 booth tech sessions:
Holy crap! MENT has both Qualcomm and Inphi chatting up their using a brand
new unannounced in-design DRC/LVS tool, "Calibre RealTime Digital", that's
to compete directly against the older CDNS PVS Interactive DRC tool that
runs inside ("in-design") Innovus PnR *now* and the soon-to-come CDNS
Pegasus Interactive that will run in-design in Innovus PnR *later*.
As collateral damage, Sawicki's new "Calibre RealTime Digital" will also be
going against Aart's IC Validator (ICV) that runs in-design in ICC/ICC2.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
A NEW SIEMENS/MENT TOOL: At first I had my doubts on this actually being a
new tool. The EDA business isn't known to without shenanigans.
Cooley: "Whether you're doing DRC/LVS on OA or GDSII, polygons are
still just polygons. Aren't you just rebranding your 5 year
old 2013 Calibre RealTime that runs inside Cadence Virtuoso
to claim it *now* does digital polygons, too?"
Spy 1: "How they put it into a digital PnR cockpit is quite different
than full custom cockpit. It's the interactive part that
was man-years of Mentor R&D work."
[ exact same Cooley question asked to Spy 2 ]
Spy 2: "The look and feel are the same for RealTime inside Virtuoso
and either Innovus or ICC2, but under the hood they're very
different. Different databases, different formats. Virtuoso
uses OA, and Innovus uses it's own db that's not OA. Same with
ICC2, Synopsys has its own db format. Different scripts, too.
Virtuoso uses SKILL, while Innovus/ICC2 uses Tcl -- and their
Tcl commands are different from each other."
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SAME USE MODEL: The new RealTime Digital exactly mimics how the older
Virtuoso RealTime works.
The customer owns the RT/RTD licenses and they're running on background
servers at the customer site that can be invoked instantanously. No wait.
No lag time. "Our advantage is the digital PnR user gets super high
quality DRC checks on their blocks -- while they're using either Innovus
or ICC2 -- but faster and better than PVS, Pegasus, or ICV."
RTD uses the same Calibre decks, same engines, and gets the exact same
results as if Calibre was run in final signoff mode. It lets the user
verify DRC/MP/PM fixes inside Innovus or ICC2.
BUT BETTER: My two spies tell me one selling point is it's faster, plus
it's sign-off quality. That is, *supposedly* RealTime Digital finds the DRC
errors that PVS Interactive, Pegasus Interactive, and IC Validator misses.
They had a slide showing how zippy fast using RTD on blocks worked. And it
didn't take Einstein to puzzle out who Customer B was ("let's see, hmmmm...
Both Inphi and Qualcomm are in this sneak attack -- and Inphi is quoted on
the left... So Customer B must be...")
Cooley: "But both Inphi and Qualcomm are Innovus houses. Actually,
Qualcomm does both Innovus and ICC2. Are these 40% and 85%
reductions by two Innovus users? Or is the 85% faster on
the left an ICC2 user?"
Spy 2: "You're right, they're both Innovus users. Under 16/14nm, we
see Innovus as the dominant PnR tool."
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
THE API: There's also a user API built-in to RealTime Digital were users
can write their own Tcl batch scripts to run/control it inside Innovus
or ICC2. That is, it's not limited to the Innovus/ICC2 human GUI.
DOES THIS MESS WITH CALIBRE RVE FILES? Nope. From what I hear, this new
RTD does not use the Calibre RVE files that interface to Innovus and ICC2,
but instead RTD uses a different (new?) interface to these two PnR tools.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
AND MORE BAD NEWS FOR ANIRUDH: On top of Sawicki now making a play on his
two in-design DRC tools (old PVS Interactive or new Pegasus Interactive),
I heard that one of the slides at the TSMC Tech Symposium in Santa Clara
had two unusual "missing" datapoints. A slide or slides were put up that
showed which DRC/LVS libraries were certified and at which nodes.
For Cadence DRC, the 7nm, 7+nm, and 5nm "certified" lib boxes were blank.
which means both PVS and Pegasus DRC still isn't working at those nodes.
And for the ARM Artisan std cell libs and SRAM compilers, the 7nm, 7+nm,
and 5nm "certified" lib boxes were also blank; meaning the ARM niche were
Innovus does really well vs. IC Compiler II might be impacted. (Clearly
TSMC is prioritizing certifying its own internal std cell libs and SRAM
compilers over ARM's!)
NOTE: These two TSMC Tech Symposium scoops come from a single spy. Until
it's confirmed, treat with caution.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
THE (DRC) EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: In overall terms, even if Sawicki totally
crushes Cadence in the DRC/LVS space, it's just him retaining dominance in
a niche that Mentor has ruled for over 20 years.
It maintains the status quo -- plus it lets MENT grow a little bit into the
smaller in-design DRC/LVS market. OK, it's a slight passing embarrassment
for Anirudh's failed Pegasus attack from last year, yes, but no biggie.
And, on the meta level, it's fun to see that the "new" Siemens Mentor is
still going to be an active Big 3 player in the EDA market. :)
- John Cooley
DeepChip.com Holliston, MA
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Related Articles
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Anirudh & Sawicki go at it over the recent CDNS Pegasus DRC launch
Anirudh's 19 jabs at Joe Sawicki's Calibre with his Pegasus launch
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