( DAC 03 Item 2 ) ----------------------------------------------- [ 01/20/04 ]
Subject: Synchronicity, Cliosoft, Perforce, RunTime DA, Interweave
MIXED BAG: In the two DAC Trip Reports prior to this one, Synchronicity
was the whipping boy here. See http://www.DeepChip.com/items/dac02-02.html
It looks likle this year Synchronicity has moved up to "so-so" in this
category with a few mild advocates and a few strong detractors. The truth
be told, most designers are the do-it-yourself types when it comes to
collaboration tools. Cliosoft, Perforce, and Interweave are the older
rivals of Synchronicity.
We have started to use Synchronicity tools in our group. DesignSync
seems to fit well to the Cadence environment, and is pretty stable while
working on the basic modes of checkin-checkout.
We have also successfully implemented the ProjectSync for bug tracking
and issues following. It is a simple customizable solution with nice web
interface and connection to version database which is stored in
DesignSync. All their release procedures were implemented using
"IPGear", a tool which originally was supposed to support IP development
flow. However, it can easily be adjusted to store and manage your
sharable data.
Bottom line: if You think of an all-in-one solution for your chip design
and software development, think about Synchronicity. But do not forget
to ask for support in the contract. You will probably need it.
- Eli Assoolin of Transchip Israel Research Center Ltd.
Synchronicity and ClioSoft seem to take the lead in this catergory. The
problems are two fold. On the one hand, there is out-sourcing and
management of one project over different geographical locations. On the
other hand, an ever increasing mixed-signal environment makes the ASCII
and binary file management more important.
- Weikai Sun of Volterra
Design collaboration tools:
We have teams split across multiple sites, but thankfully not across time
zones. I thought we'd be ideal places for the design collaboration
tools, so we had some demos from Cliosoft and Synchronicity about 3 years
ago. We didn't them very impressive. They seemed under-developed at the
time. I imagine they've moved on a lot since, but we seem to be doing
fine without them.
- Thomas Fairbairn of 3com
We use the Synchronicity toolset. All in all, we're convinced that it's
a positive benefit but there's still some work for them to do to realize
the potential. It seems the best fit for the space we play in.
- Kevin Jones of Rambus
Design Collaboration, Configuration Control & Similar Tools
Synchronicity sells tools for both design management and also web-based
design collaboration. These tools are moving to SQL databases for
increased speed, and have a new API for 3rd party tools. They are
integrated with Cadence, and are partnered with Synopsys for Milkyway,
as well as being in the OpenAccess alliance.
ClioSoft says their data management tool is easier to use and administer
than Synchronicity and cheaper as well. They will customize it for free
as well. I think historically they have been tied to Cadence but they
now hook to Mentor and Summit as well. Interfaces to Milkyway and Magma
are coming.
Synapsis Technology sells a product data management tool that integrates
with Cadence but is at a higher level than Synchronicity or ClioSoft. It
integrates marketing info, specifications, manufacturing data, etc.
Oridus sells tools for web conferencing, remote access and remote
viewing, but there is no database stuff so it's really not in competition
with Synchronicity, etc.
Interweave Technology sells a tool that captures the design process and
can add wizards and help files. They now hook into Microsoft Project.
Their tool allows easy review of status from a web site.
- John Weiland of Intrinsix
We have a large dependence on Cadence DFII data in much of what we do,
since we do Analog Mixed signal designs, and well as many of our own
custom blocks. We have not seen a CVS based solution to the problem of
dealing with DFII data, especially from the perspective of the people
using Opus based tools day in and out.
We have done prolonged internal experiments with tools Synchronicity,
Cliosoft and Perforce. I don't see a lot of talk in your articles about
Perforce. The tool have a very interesting approach to version control
that we think lends itself well to the EDA process. However the DFII
interface (as is almost all of their interfaces) is an unsupported open
source contribution that is free.
After doing a lot of analysis of both the usability of the tools,
performance impact on our EDA tools etc., we find that the Cliosoft tool
stands out as clearly superior for what we need.
The Synchronicity tools (besides being wonderfully expensive) require
massive amounts of training to use effectively, and after spending all
that money we were left with something that was going to continue to cost
lots of money to support, both in people resources and actually $$. The
real stopper for us was that the performance of our layout processes was
difficult to maintain. It is true that with support from Synchronicity
we got through most of the performance issues, but it was clear that to
maintain high run time performance would require a good engineer to be
actively engaged for the life time of our use of the tool.
The Perforce tool is exceptionally fast, and we really liked the concept
of atomic checkin. The open source interface to DFII data work well
enough once we got it working, but it required help from the open source
author to get it installed correctly into our Cadence tools. While the
Cadence interface worked well, it did not seem a natural fit to our
Cadence tool users. That said, Perforce is price right, and is very
fast. For teams that do not do DFII interface, this tool should be
considered.
SOS from Cliosoft had by far the best user interface. The GUI for the
other tools seemed more of a tacked on GUI. Once you had learned the
tool, no one really wanted to use the GUI. However for Cliosoft, the GUI
because a tool that give good live information and was the preferred
interface for our Cadence users. Cadence users would keep the SOS GUI up
almost as if it was another Cadence window.
SOS is just as customizable as DesignSync was (from our perspective of
what we would want to customize) but was much more accessible without so
much training. The average engineer can learn SOS in a few hours. The
administrative cost of keeping SOS up and running and working well is
very small. At the same time, GUI and process customization was easier
to implement. Dealing with performance problems was a one time deal, and
it has not been a problem since. While some batch jobs were a bit slower
than Perforce, it was always much faster than Synchronicity.
What pushed the decision for us was concern over an unsupported DFII
interface with only one person (the author) really active in the open
source DFII interface. What cinched the deal was Cliosoft giving us a
price good enough to make us forget about how inexpensive Perforce was.
We are now on our way to a much more stable and disciplined use of our
total design data (including our DFII data) that will make us much more
effective at reuse.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I don't see us forking out more cash for the tools, when we can manage
with CVS and Make files.
- Nicco Bhabu of Chip Express
InterWeave -> Their project management tool (6th gear) looked pretty
interesting. We have alot of IP reuse, integration, and multi-site
design efforts and communication on some of these chips can be quite a
chore... I liked their email/html-based approach, and their architecture
seemed pretty open. I'll even give them bonus points because a feature I
mentioned during a demo at DAC was actually in the tool in beta form, a
month later when they came to show it off to our company. My only
thought afterwards was, "this seems so simple and obvious, why didn't I
think of something like that?" The big question will be if we adopt
their tool, will people use it enough to make it useful?
- Jeff Echtenkamp-Cho of Broadcom
|
|
