( DAC 11 Item 12 ) ---------------------------------------------- [10/13/11]
Subject: ClioSoft SOS, IC Manage GDP, Tuscany Pinpoint, Satin VIP Lane
INFRASTRUCTURE: While two companies at this last DAC were approaching
chip design data management from the "design data management" side
(ClioSoft SOS and IC Manage GDP); it's interesting to see two companies
approaching the same problem from the "project status management" side
(Tuscany Pinpoint and Satin VIP Lane). You're looking at each paired
companies' future tools here.
The newbie, Satin VIP Lane, is a small French start-up based a little over
100 miles from its main customer, STmicroelectronics, in Grenoble, France.
"What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific tools that
you saw at DAC this year? WHY where they interesting to you?"
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Cliosoft SOS:
In the demo their AE demonstrated the simple installation & setup steps
you have to get this software installed, configured, and integrated in
Virtuoso within 10 mins.
The Cliosoft AE was asked to create a workarea on their demo project.
Their demo data was not too big - around 10,000 objects. The workarea
creation took just a few seconds. They use symbolic links to create
a workarea which helps disk space and speed.
Their coolest feature was their graphical diff tool. You can graphically
see and step through difference between two versions of a schematic or
layout within seconds. I think this is one tool we can use immediately.
It can save us a lot of time.
One capability which would be nice to have is the ability to display
version/status information directly within the Cadence library manager.
I think this is a limitation of the Cadence Lib Manager. IC Manage has
done it by providing their own library manager. I would be nice to see
the DM status in the Cadence Library Manager instead of using a third
party library manager for just DM.
Overall, ClioSoft's system seemed powerful and well integrated with
Virtuoso and most importantly really easy to use.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
ClioSoft, an Schematic diff comparison tool (do not remember the name):
Why was such a little useful tool not invented earlier?
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
b) IC Manage seems a good alternative to Synchronicity for db management.
- Angelo Contini of STmicroelectronics
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Our project set-up and maintenance for IC Manage's GDP is minimal, only
about 2-3 hours a month for dozens of workspaces and 4 ongoing projects.
Additionally, GDP (with proxy server) check in/check out and sync time
to both local and remote sites is ultra fast.
As an example, for 10K-15K files, it took less than 2 minutes to perform
a full workspace population of a DFII-only workspace. I would like to
clarify that the 10-15K files is very dependent on data speeds on our
corporate network bandwidth, and of course on chip size. This example
was for a 1.5 Gbyte chip.
- David Genzer of Biotronik
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
We are already an IC Manage customer and use their basic GDP to overlay
our internal code to wrap around GDP in our design flow.
I was also shown a demo of new schematic diff tools in Virtuoso. It
looked very useful. It lets you diff different versions of schematic
data in Virtuoso mode, where the results are shown as a schematic
highlight and not in text mode or netlist.
Another 'schematic diff' feature IC Manage has is you can also compare
changed notes or other info which do not display in the netlist.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
The driving reason we wanted to use a design management system was to
avoid copying and updating hierarchies, relying on naming conventions,
particularly near tape out. In particular this would allow us to work
much more in parallel and speed up the final stages of design completion.
We started looking at IC Manage GDP in March 2010. Our eval criteria:
- Do the DM job & manage check-ins and check-outs? Yes
- Multi site support & eliminate rsync? Yes
- Work with Cadence Virtuoso? Yes
- Low administration required? Yes
- Good support? Yes
We purchased IC Manage GDP in August 2010. We have done several tapeouts
with it. It took about 1 to 2 weeks from when we first began to set up
GDP to when we completed deployment and our designers began using it in
their design flow. Our team ramped up quite quickly once they started
using the tools; several had used similar tools before which helped.
Some notable differences in our process since we started using IC Manage:
- No more nightly rsyncs.
Before IC Manage, we asked designers to create their own working area
which linked to shared project spaces. This was rsynched every night to
ensure all sites had the same data. We now use GDP's workspaces, and
our remote sites now get instant updates of data. We'd hate to go back
to a nightly rsync!
- Managing releases.
Before we used IC Manage, to manage our releases and exchange info, our
designers had shared user-libraries and followed a fairly elaborate
naming convention scheme to avoid name collisions when data was archived.
Near tapeout we would create a "gold" library which was a hierarchical
copy of the schematic, followed by a hierarchical copy of layout data.
We may use their IC Central in future for managing IP blocks. We have
not yet reviewed its technology in-house.
- Bob Forbes of Fresco Microchip, Inc.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Tuscany Pinpoint
This product has really improved over the last year. They've been
constantly adding features to help with Path Search and Bucketing.
They continue to show a super responsive ability to add features
quickly, though I wish there was a little more capability to make
annotations on the browser based layout viewer directly.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
I looked at Pinpoint this year at DAC and have even used Pinpoint.
We found the ability for it to quickly summarize timing and visualize
project paths extremely valuable.
Moreover, it makes project management much more efficient. Anyone
can get any design data / flow run time/ qualify of results with a
few clicks in the browser.
One of our teams started using Pinpoint to drive their staff meetings
as it made it very easy to categorize the problems and identify the
next steps the team needed to take. We worked with Tuscany to point
out the need to add the ability to search for paths and bucket them
which they demo'd this year at DAC.
Also, we see the potential in the tool to help make our design sign-off
flow much better with the visualization of design data.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Recently we had a chance to evaluate Tuscany Pinpoint. A few bugs
were found and quickly dealt with, when handling a very large 40 nm
design (400+ sqmm). Overall we found the tool to be valuable from
the perspective of capturing and reporting design information upwards,
as well as providing useful insights to the design leads and teams
directly. Consolidating and making sense of results from multiple
timing modes, PVT points, and blocks was rapid and revealing.
Adoption would be straight forward as the tool doesn't intrude into
the way that the teams do their existing work.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Satin VIP Lane: for our purpose we will need more and more traceable
connection from requirements-to-product throughout the design process.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Join
Index
Next->Item
|
|
