( DAC 02 Item 19 ) ---------------------------------------------- [ 9/10/02 ]
Subject: Tanner Tools, IC-Editors Inc.'s ICED, InternetCAD.com
WELCOME TO THE DISCOUNT DEPARTMENT: For those chip design shops that don't
have big budgets for EDA layout tools, try InternetCAD, Tanner EDA, or ICED;
but be warned -- you get what you pay for!
"InternetCAD.com sells ludicrously cheap tools. They give you a floor
planner, standard cell and gate array placer, and gridless global and
detailed routers for about $10K fixed ($20K floating license) per year.
Their biggest design moved from about 1,000 cells last year to about
5,000 this year; they're mostly used for analog/mixed signal stuff.
Support is email only. They're not flying an A.E. to you with those
margins."
- John Weiland of Intrinsix
"A company that we do a lot of work with tried to use Tanner to do
their layout, and they said the project was a mess. IMHO, Tanner
could do much better with a Linux offering. When we looked at
Tanner vs. Design Compiler, the apparent savings quickly vanished
when we took hardware cost into account."
- Jay Abel of Shera International
"Tanner tools suck. It's a bug ridden piece of crap software that I've
been forced to use on and off over the years. Tanner does one thing
right regarding this software and that's marketing. I would like to
say a few things to Tanner: Fix the bugs. Accept the fact that your
software does have bugs. Fix the bugs. Stop wasting time with new
features that we don't care about. Fix the bugs. Learn how to write
software!
ICED from IC-Editors is the best full-custom IC design layout tool
ever created. It, like Tanner tools, runs on a PC. ICED has the
fastest redraw of any layout tool PERIOD. Compare it with workstation
based tools. It blows them away. This tool doesn't have a lot of
intelligence, and I'm sure that it is behind the times in these regards
to some extent. But for the kind of designs I do, memories, imagers,
detector readout arrays, it's perfect. ICED also has DRC and LVS
capabilities which I like very much. I feel that they are a little
antiquated in terms of the industries new requirements here but I find
I can always get the job done when I'm faced with new challenges. Oh
yeah. ICED NEVER crashes. OK. Maybe once in the last 5 years. But,
it is SUPER stable. It's a little like learning the VI editor.
Difficult at first but then you'll never want to go back."
- David Ward of SemQuest, Inc.
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