( DAC 13 Item 7 ) ----------------------------------------------- [10/15/13]
Subject: IC Manage Views, ClioSoft Smart Cache, newbie Zentera at DAC'13
IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counting the user "Best of DAC" write-ups, IC Manage easily
trounced it's data management rivals. Even though I think DM is dull, they
continue to have their fans. This year IC Manage got 9 meaty user write-ups
while their rivals got only 1 or 2 short write-ups each.
To paraphrase one user's response:
"Data management tools are like taxes, they're sort of
a necessary evil."
But what caught my (and other engineer's) technical eye was this IC-Manage
Views Workspace Accelerator that pre-populates your EDA tools into your
workstation. Now THAT'S useful DM that I could actually like.
And exactly who or what is this newbie Zentera bug/conferencing tool???
"What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific tools you
saw at DAC this year? WHY did they interest you?"
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b. Zentera (not an EDA tool).
Very interested in order to alleviate the absolute pain it is to
file bugs with Cadence. The tool creates a chamber at our site
that will allow us to "invite" Cadence R&D to login to. This
could save me 1-2 weeks of wrestling a design in order to post
it with Cadence.
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IC Manage Views
I saw the IC Manage Views demo. It is unbelievably fast -- no one else
has anything close to it. When you create the workspace, IC Manage Views
gives you a virtual display of everything in seconds, where normally it
might take minutes to a half hour to sync a large database in
another DM system.
Views does this without using up gigabytes of disc space. For example,
when you fire up Cadence Virtuoso and make an edit, it only downloads
the file you are reading or editing.
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IC-Manage's Views Workspace Accelerator
My company has been an IC-Manage customer for about 7 years now. We
are a fabless company and have several hundred IC-Manage users.
One of the most interesting tools that I saw at DAC this year was
IC-Manage's Views Workspace Acceleration product. Shiv Sikand gave
me a demo of the tool.
We've learned the hard way that the performance of a tool like Cadence
Virtuoso is at the mercy of disk access times -- which can fluctuate
greatly over the course of a day. We've seen slowdowns from:
- network problems
- problems with their machines
- problems with the software
- end-user issues, or
- problems with heavy loading on shared network storage
Our CAD engineers get caught between the end-user and the IT department
trying to figure this. Our IT departments don't have the bandwidth to
track down performance issues. IC Manage Views increases EDA tool flow
performance by using local memory. IC Manage says that:
- Instead of populating the entire workspace and syncing data you
don't need, IC Manage Views uses the meta data to display virtual
files. It then downloads the files that you access to a local
cache, which could be RAM, using a TMPFS file system.
- It treats local disc space like a cache to reduce traffic on file
servers. It does this while providing a secure way of handling
file permissions across workspaces and sites. This is where
inherent Unix group membership size limitations have run out of
steam, plus they are limited to directory level granularity.
- You basically only use storage space on the file server for the
files you edit, since the space is automatically released upon
check-in.
Thw IC Manage demo showed workspace syncs now take only a few seconds
instead of several minutes.
We have not had a chance to evaluate IC Manage Views on-site yet but we're
happy to see an EDA company starting to tackle what's traditionally been
put in a box labeled "IT problem".
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My exposure to IC Manage is still quite limited. At this point I
can say that IC Manage solves an important workspace syncing
problem. They made a good presentation on how they solve it in
conjunction with Perforce, and I hope to evaluate it in more depth
at some point.
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IC Manage Views.
We are IC Manage users, but have yet to evaluate ICM Views.
Views, something similar to ClioSoft's SOS "Smart Cache", does
sound interesting. However, I'm disappointed that it is not part
of the standard package.
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ClioSoft SOS DIFF and Smart Cache.
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We evaluated IC Manage GDP as a possible replacement for ClioSoft' SOS
tool.
Personally, I think all of these types of tools add too much overhead
and force users into a particular work model that may or may not be
optimal for their situation. Or else add so much complexity that you
need local experts to keep it working/synced and provide support. But,
like taxes, they're sort of a necessary evil.
Does any one tool provide advantages over the other? I'm sure. But an
expert could probably explain how to achieve the same or similar result
with their solution.
Honestly, to really figure out which one is better/more capable, I you
need to get both company's experts in the same room and 'dual it out'
while taking questions and challenges from experience users.
Bottom line, Cliosoft and ICM are both capable tools with their own
fan bases.
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IC Manage.
I haven't used it, but IC Manage's Virtuoso GUI rev control system
seems easy to use for analog circuit and layout designers. It has
a friendly UI and looks like a very organized system.
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IC Manage GDP.
We use IC Manage to track our IP, versions, and bug fixes.
- GDP has been able to scale with our increase in activity
and database size.
- We have sites located globally and use them around the
clock, we need our data transfers to be timely. Our
designers check in more content more often.
- GDP also supports our security policies.
- Its central repository also helps us track our data and
to tapeout the right versions.
All this helps us bring down our silicon risk down for each tapeout.
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IC Manage GDP
The Property Manager and Checklist Manager allow you to set different
properties for configurations, such as a checklists, both for during
the design process and for tapeout. E.g.:
- Floorplaning
- Timing
- Simulation
- DRC sign-off
- Cadence
- Simulation vectors
The Property Manager tracks changes in JIRA for debugging. It's
integrated with JIRA, and you can identify where the bugs are and it
will flag it to whoever has an open configuration. You can track
the changes for different library types:
- Digital: vectors, testbenches, Tcl scripts, Verilog scripts,
Encounter, documentation.
- Analog/Custom: Analog Artist testbenches, vectors that feed
into Analog Artist, framework testbenches,
Encounter (A+D blocks).
- You can also combine groups and have, analog, digital, and
A/D testbenches
We use IC Manage GDP for multiple sites, so its central repository is
key, for us to centrally manage our data.
IC Manage uses Perforce - the configurations and release management
is in the Perforce database. This is key because the data is open
and accessible if that is ever required.
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I felt IC Manage seemed to be simple to manage the projects operated
across multiple sites.
One of our team members has started introducing it for multi-site
operation.
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Some noteworthy items re: IC Manage GDP:
- GDP points to existing IP being reused rather than making a copy,
then we can change and branch it if needed.
- IC Manage lets us encapsulate our verification and specification
as part of our IP, including testbenches.
- Our design teams can check in their work often with GDP, so we
can test often, then trace back quickly if we run into problems.
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MethodICs: Bringing continuous integration capabilities into
IC Design. With my analogue focus this seems to
be a step forward over things like ICManage.
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