( DAC 02 Item 2 ) ----------------------------------------------- [ 9/10/02 ]
Subject: Synchronicity, CVS, Runtime DA, ClioSoft, Oridus, InterWeave
NO, THANK YOU (PART 1): When you talk about forking out cold hard cash for
anything that's called "Design Collaboration" or "Flow" tools, the most
common customer reaction is: "No, thank you, we just roll our own." Beyond
that resistance, CVS, ClearCase, & ClioSoft are the most popular tools used.
Synchronicity is there, too, but an awful lot of their customers don't have
too many good things to say about DesignSync. One company that appears to
be left over from the dot com craze is Oridus. From what I can figure out,
they have this tool called SpaceCruiser that lets fabs share huge data files
very quickly through secure "tunnels" with chip designers on the Internet.
"Don't use 'em. We'll use Make scripts for file dependancies, and CVS."
- Mark Wroblewski of Cirrus Logic
"Design colloration tools are probably useful. But it's hard to tell if
the tools can be adjusted enough to fit into MY design-flow. And I
wouldn't pay very much for such a tool."
- Stefan Sandstrom of Axis
"We are willing to pay for tools that handle complex design automation
tasks. But pay for tools to help improve flow? I'll stick with
Perl scripts, thank you."
- John Filion of Theseus
"Colaboration tool? Don't use them. Don't plan to."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Clearcase, Netmeeting and VNC work for us."
- Sean W. Smith of Cisco Systems
"We're using CVS and Make for release management."
- Jay Abel of Shera International
"We moved to CVS about 18 months ago and you would be surprised how
little trouble we have now with our software repository. We use CVS
across sites effectively and I don't see why anyone would pay for
tools in this area."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We're having a hard time just convincing our engineers to move from
CVS to RCS. The return on these tools just doesn't seem to be worth
the migration effort. From a flow automation perspective, Runtime
DA looks interesting, but no plans to eval."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"The design colaboration tools are very nice software development
tools. Expensive, confusing, prone to abuse. As a user of one of
these tools, I make every effort to use CVS whenever I can."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"These tools are very much under appreciated. People need a cheap,
reliable, and compatible design management environment. Had some
experience with ClioSoft, and I like the integration in Cadence DFII."
- Weikai Sun of Volterra
"Regarding flow tools, we are trying to use VoomFlow from Voom, Inc.
It's very convenient. To design SOC using complex hierarchical layout
style, I think this kind of tools will be indispensable."
- Zenji Oka of Ricoh
"We primarily looked at Synchronicity after seeing their DATE stand in
2000, and we've also checked out Cliosoft. Synchronicity had a
wonderful looking web interface but at the time the database system
and interface (it's built on top of an Oracle database) did not shout
stability -- don't know why, just a feeling we got.
In the heady days of late 2000 / early 2001 these tools seemed like a
good idea with rapidly expanding teams in an increasing number of
sites. Does not seem like such a good idea now when money's tight,
teams are shrinking and sites are consolidating."
- Tom Fairbairn of 3Com Europe
"Played with & not fond of Synchronicity. Runtime DA looks interesting,
but will probably not investigate this year."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We use Synchronicity for configuration management and issue tracking.
It does a solid job of both. For configuration management, I still
wonder if you couldn't piece together equally useful tools using free
open source packages, e.g., CVS."
- John Busco of Brocade Communications
"I used Synchronicity (DesignSync) in a previous job. It's pretty nice,
but was slow. We use CVS now, it has its own problems but its faster."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We are using Synchronicity for database management and revision
control. I don't see much use for Flow and Design colaboration
tools. Nothing can replace strong team leaders."
- Mehran Bagheri of Multilink Technology
"I have taped out the wrong layout on a chip. Our Design Automation
people have been unable to do anything useful with Syncronicity so
far. I hope that will change."
- John Webster of Intel
"We bought Synchronicity and it used to be dog slow. We moaned to them
and it's improved. Just about the only way to do things for Cadence
rev control but most of out projects could get along fine with CVS.
Eval-ed Runtime DA a year or two ago but found that we didn't really
need that sophistication. Make and shell scripts + LSF would do most
of what we wanted."
- Allan Cochrane of Arm
"We are looking at Synchronicity. Definite need within our corporate
environment but these kinds of tools are difficult to integrate. Kind
of like changing a religion as it affects what a design engineer does
very closely wrt their working environment."
- Phil Hoppes of Intersil
"Syncronicity? Good data management tool with database that can be used
for bug-tracking.
ClioSoft? We used it for a project.
Techmate SiCADA? A good tool for organizing simulations. Includes bug
tracking. However, it may not be optimized for incremental compiling
and NC-Sim."
- Ed Strauch of Cirrus Logic
"I think the tools are expensive. One has to pay $4,500 per seat for
Syncronicity's tool. Other tools are probably in a similar range."
- Jai Durgam of SiImage
"38.0 Design Collaboration, Configuration Control & Similar Tools
Synchronicity sells a tool called Design Sync that allows designers at
various sites to work on the same data over the internet. They say it
is web based, hierarchical, facilitates reuse and distribution, and can
handle Cadence's dfII database (for an extra price). It saves pointers
to whole configurations of files when a particular snapshot of a design
is saved. They also have a tool called Project Sync that allows bug
tracking, etc. on a project, and one called IP Gear that tracks
releases of libraries, IP, reusable blocks, etc. Note that some of
these tools are sold on a per user basis, and users are semi permanent
(it's not just how many people are using it at any one time).
Simutest sells a system for version control and change management that
spans design and manufacturing. Unlike Synchronicity, they are not web
based. My guru in this area thinks they are more development oriented
than Synchronicity.
Runtime Design Automation sells a tool to document and automate your
flow in a Tcl-like language. They say it is better than using "make"
because it tracks file access as the job is being done. It also does
LSF type job distribution. This is best for teams with a few
experienced people and a lot of newbies, or disjoint teams where
handoffs might be missed.
EDAptive Computing sells a tool for managing data but it is not EDA
specific (for example, it has no dfII hooks built-in).
PTC sells their Windchill tool for managing project and product data,
both electrical and mechanical. It interfaces with Mentor, Cadence and
Zuken and is aimed at board level design projects.
Interweave Technology sells a tool that captures the design process and
can add wizards and help files. I think this works best for cases
where 1. you have a few experienced people and lots of newbies and
2. your flow is pretty stable (you don't start at RTL one week, a
legacy design the next, and a back-of-the-envelope sketch the week
after that). They emphasize that this is for process management,
unlike Synchronicity, which they see as data management."
- John Weiland of Intrinsix
"InterWeave Tech
The InterWeave tools (shiftUp and 6thGear) create a web-based
infrastructure for formal accounting of design tasks via:
- process modeling,
- visibility into resource/schedule related project
- management tasks,
- threaded communication and compliance monitoring.
It's useful for teams lacking formal monitoring of their design cycle."
- Chandra Moturu of Hewlett-Packard
"Oridus SpaceCruiser lets us quickly establish secure web collaboration
sessions between our Silicon Valley headquarters and remote sites,
including our office in Ireland."
- Liz Abe-Meredith of Xilinx
"SpaceCruiser was easy to deploy into the corporate network and it
creates a secure environment for remote Internet data connections."
- Leo Chang of UMC
"We're evaluating SpaceCruiser for our customer communications. We're
still in the process of setting up the web server, but SpaceCruiser
looks like it'll be the most complete solution for collaborating via
Intranet or Internet."
- Winnie Ng of Jazz Semiconductor
"For design collaboration we just had a brief look at what Mentor has."
- Raimund Soenning of Philips
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