( ESNUG 588 Item 21 ) --------------------------------------------- [10/16/20]
Subject: Sawicki on his "free" AFS-XT being 5x-10x faster than Spectre-X
Virtual DAC'20 Troublemakers Panel
Cooley: Sawicki.
Sawicki: Yes, sir.
Cooley: I just noticed recently that your BDA SPICE guys came out with
AFS-XT -- directly going against Anirudh's Spectre-X SPICE.
It just recently came out.
I have benchmarks on DeepChip. AFS-XT was getting about a 3X to
11X speedup compared to Spectre-X. (See ESNUG 588 #20)
Two questions related to that.
The crazy part - one: you're giving it [AFS-XT] away for free.
Do you realize... is Mentor in the business to make money in
EDA? Or is that just suddenly you're doing charitable stuff?
Why are you giving away your new developments for free?
Sawicki: Well John, I mean as you heard a couple people say, we're all
in this business for love not for money, so... (laughter)
To be serious about it, you know, our tool is aimed at the fact
that when you look at things like either: 5G, data centers with
SERDES -- parasitics are becoming way more important -- and
parasitics are a bear to simulate in SPICE engines.
This whole AFS-XT innovation was based around being about to
manage large chips with lots of parasitics.
Cadence's Spectre-X is probably targeting the same thing, but we
were really responding to the market's need in this case.
It's just a way of being able to do that simulation faster and
it seemed like AFS-XT having the same license scheme enables us
to get that into the customer's hands quicker, make customers
happier, and happier customers are the ones that buy more in
the future.
So, I don't see it as a charity -- we see it as good business
practice.
Cooley: How so? What do you mean? I mean you're anticipating them
buying more licenses because it's a smaller node?
Sawicki: No -- well, yes -- there's a lot more simulation happening -- but
if you have your customers by being able to turn on a switch can
go take advantage of this new capability and run 5-10 times faster,
they're going to use that particular SPICE simulator more often.
They're going to be happier with it, and you're going to get
growth from it.
You know, you've got to balance out sometimes. There are times
when you want to go into the market with a new license/new
technology, where that's the way you want to grow and develop the
product.
But there are other times you just want to make sure you
accelerate the use of the product you have in place. And that's
where our intention is in this AFS-XT case.
Cooley: So, have you effectively stopped Spectre-X from coming in and
taking BDA slots?
Sawicki: Well, I can't answer whether there's been any designer out there
who has switched from one to the other.
I know that our customer base is very happy with what we've done,
we continue to get new customers, and our AFS usage continues to
grow. So, we're pretty happy about where we landed right now.
Cooley: Okay. Anirudh, would you have any comments on this? Has it made
it harder? Has their AFS-XT speedup made it harder for Spectre-X
to get in...?
Anirudh: Spectre-X was introduced last DAC (2019) if I remember right.
(See ESNUG 587 #3.) The response was pretty strong. We
announced it with several major customers like Renesas, MediaTek,
and 4 or 5 others.
And you may know that Spectre is the most widely used SPICE tool.
I think the opportunity in the SPICE world, at least from
Cadence's standpoint -- and we compete with all the players and
I'm pretty happy with how Spectre-X is doing -- and it's growing
pretty well -- the opportunity for Cadence is more on what I call
Fast SPICE which is memory market, DRAM and Flash.
And traditionally Cadence hasn't had a strong tool in Fast SPICE.
So, we are working on that and you will see effort from us in
that area.
So, from a user standpoint and a business standpoint, we are
pretty happy with SPICE and Spectre-X is doing phenomenal in the
market -- SPICE and RF.
And the opportunity for Cadence is more in the memory segment,
you know Fast SPICE and you'll see more activity...
Cooley: You have that... a new 3-D solver you're doing that's... you've
had the new 3-D solver that's kind of reinvigorating the entire
company. (See ESNUG 586 #6)
What Mentor BDA is doing, they said they have a new solver, also.
So, they're kind of fighting fire with fire with you, that's why
I'm asking this question.
Anirudh: Absolutely. I mean all EDA companies will improve their tools
and we are happy that Mentor is doing that. But in terms of our
competitive positioning... solver is a key thing in SPICE
anyway.
I mean depending on the design size it could be like 40% to 70%
of the runtime is the solver. So that's an essential technology
to improve.
Sawicki: John, the only thing I'd add to that is that as many people have
noticed, Mentor really relies upon having best-in-class tools,
because we're not full flow.
And the only reason that anyone buys (Mentor) BDA is because it
is a best-in-class solution. So, there's no doubt we are not
winning the whole market share, but when people have high
performance needs, generally they end up with us.
Anirudh: SPICE simulator traditionally, there are people that use multiple
of them. Just because they use Mentor doesn't mean that it's
better that Spectre-X -- I don't see that in the marketplace.
I wish everybody well, everyone has to work with their customers.
But I'm pretty confident that Spectre-X is the best SPICE tool in
the market. And I've done SPICE [R&D] for a while.
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