( DAC 00 Item 45 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 7/13/00 ]
Subject: Cheap P&R -- TimberWolf, Pulsic, InternetCAD.com, Matricus
PLAGERISM & FLATTERY: For those doing COT on the cheap, there's a small
group of tiny EDA companies that make their own cheap P&R tools and/or
tools that cheap imitations of the big boy's tools. InternetCAD.com is
reselling their revamped version of TimberWolf. Pulsic, an English
company, makes a timing driven router, Lyric, that sells mostly in Japan.
(They reminded me of the old Gambit that Synopsys scopped up.) Matricus,
in Texas, reps a German EDA company that does knock-off imitations of
Cadence tools (or so they seemed to imply.) http://www.matricus.com
"internetCAD.com - leases a place and route tool for chips for $10K.
That's right, only $10K."
- an anon engineer
"InternetCAD.com still has a tool package that includes a floor planner,
standard cell and gate array placers, and gridless global and detail
routers. The package is leased per year at $9,995 per copy!!!!!! It's
sold over the Internet. Support is not included. It is hard to believe
they can even afford a booth at DAC. They say their customers are two
types - placement customers like Intel and Compaq (HUH!?) and router
customers, who are usually small companies."
- an anon engineer (Yes, this reads like an ad, but it's a real
user quote. I double checked on it.)
"One of my two Bozo awards goes to Pulsic, who wasted 15 minutes of my
time explaining a REALLY dumb idea. They sell a timing-driven router.
It is a router only; it does not do placement. I pointed out that once
the placement is done, there's not much the router can do to fix timing.
They disagreed. In their demonstration, they showed a net that they
said was too fast. The router inserted a snake route to solve this
problem. It can also equalize delays in clock trees using snake routes."
- an anon engineer
"We've been using Pulsic's Lyric mainly for top-level designs that have
analog layout, and have seen a dramatic reduction in turn-around time.
We evaluated other routers, but we chose Lyric because even in complex
analog layouts, Lyric excelled in:
Routing completion
Routing density
Routing quality
Lyric’s seamless integration with Seiko Instrument’s SX9000 layout
editor ensured that routing, editing, and re-routing presented no
problems for us. In complex analog layouts, automatic routers often
don’t produce the desired routing pattern, and the important thing in
such cases is how quickly new enhancements can be delivered. The Pulsic
team was able to quickly resolve any such problems."
- an anon engineer in Japan
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