( DAC'14 Item 5 ) ----------------------------------------------- [12/05/14]
Subject: IC Manage GDP/View, ClioSoft SOS/DIFF were #5 tools at DAC'14
EAST IS EAST AND WEST IS WEST: For the Oh-So-Exciting world of design data
management (DDM), there are two schools of thought:
- Global DDM where the entire planet syncs up all designs and all
IP's across all Earth time zones like IC Manage GDP.
- Local groups keep their own private DDM where designs and IP are
kept locally only within the company group like ClioSoft SOS.
Both sides, global vs. local, each have their own militant pluses/minuses.
For tech talk, engineers liked IC Manage for its IP reuse and fast workspace
repopulation ("Views"), and ClioSoft for its "Visual Design Diff" tool.
Although both Dassault DesignSync and MethodICs were at DAC'14, I received
no user mention on either as a "Best of DAC" tool this year.
SURVEY QUESTION #1:
"What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific EDA tools
you saw at DAC this year? WHY did they interest you?"
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We have development groups in multiple locations around the world, and
both our designers and verification engineers use IC Manage.
The fundamental issue with our prior design management system was that
updating workspaces was horribly slow -- both locally, and even worse
for our remote sites. The result was that our engineers would cherry
pick their updates rather than update everything. This would lead to
inconsistencies because engineer's workspaces were not consistent.
After an eval, our company switched over to IC Manage GDP.
It's much faster. From a new workspace, it's 10X faster, and for an
incremental updated, it's perhaps 1000X. For example IC Manage will
take 30 to 40 seconds instead of 20-30 minutes, for a 2 GB workspace.
It worked well for multi-site design, even our remote site gets good
performance. As a result, everyone updates their workspace more
frequently.
IC Manage has a feature called "shelve", where you can store a set of
files to test it or share them with multiple users before deciding
whether to formally checking them into GDP. It's something that our
engineers really liked with IC Manage.
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IC Manage. Fast check-in and check-outs. Global IP tracking across
all our sites, so we know the status of all the IP under development.
Reduced our server count.
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We have been using IC Manage for 5 years in our silicon design team.
About 6 months prior to them, we were preparing to move our software
team over to Perforce.
The Cadence Virtuoso interface coupled with the Perforce back end made
IC Manage a good fit for us. We also use it for our non-Cadence data
(RTL, verification, vendor IP) so we can organize all this data under
one "project", and then reuse it under a new project.
IC Manage proxies and super proxies helped minimize latency. Now all
our design sites can see the latest updates, no matter where the
editing has taken place.
Warning: This was not available right out of the box, but after some
configuration. With minimal training, we were able to have a good
working environment in about 3 weeks.
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IC Manage DDM. It works.
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We are not yet a customer of IC Manage, although we will likely purchase
it in the next year.
We've seen their presentation which was very good. No experience with
their tool or working with their support team yet.
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IC Manage. Shiv gives us excellent support.
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My company uses IC Manage.
GDP SmartEdge speeds remote site performance and scalability. IC Manage
claims 10X performance improvement, but I haven't tested it.
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IC Manage demoed these three products to me at DAC:
- IC Manage GDP
- GDP IP Pro
- IC Manage Views workspace acceleration.
IC Manage Views looked mostly OK even though its caching mechanism
could perhaps be more elegantly solved on the server side.
I have recommended our flow set-up people to take a closer look to
assess if shifting from internal Cadence Virtuoso data management
to IC Manage gives enough gain for the investment -- particularly
the setup work to fit in our flow which is non-trivial.
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We use IC Manage
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IC Manage. This new breed of DM tools could be viewed as a project
coverage database that can be used to track all relevant aspects of
project development and drive closure.
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Our chip is in at least 5 different time zones. It is good to see
systems like IC Manage GDP let design teams get on with their work
rather than spending time building more complex infrastructure.
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b. IC Manage
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IC Manage Views Storage Acceleration Software interested me since
we have design teams across the globe working on huge chips, so
the time to transmit huge physical design databases is an issue
for us.
I was impressed by how quickly it could populate an engineer's
workspace and allow them to begin work on a new chip database.
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Cliosoft DIFF.
Not new, but we use it all the time to check for circuit errors.
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Cliosoft Visual Diff to save on Virtuoso tokens.
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Clio Diff
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We use Visual Diff every day to check what changed.
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Cliosoft VDD has saved my ass more than once.
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Bought Cliosoft SOS to break free of corporate CAD's policy games.
SOS works. We're free to get back to design.
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Cliosoft.
Srinath is the mellowest guy in EDA. Enjoy seeing him at DAC.
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Virtuoso with SOS. No complaints.
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Related Articles
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ICM Zero Time Sync, ClioSoft Visual DIFF, MethodICs, DesignSync
One designer's detailed comparison of ClioSoft vs. IC Manage
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