( DAC'16 Item 8 ) ----------------------------------------------- [05/05/17]
Subject: IC Manage Envision tapeout predictor was #8 best tool at DAC'16
NEW CATEGORY OF EDA TOOL: It was two years ago when Dean Drako announced a
totally new type of EDA that used your project's log files and design run
data to accurately predict when your chip was going to tapeout.
What made this launch successful was Dean had a very detailed report on how
Xilinx had used his ICM Envision tool to predict 9 months ahead of time of
when their 28nm to 20nm Zynq migration was going to tapeout -- and it was
accurate to within +/- 1 week!
Keep in mind, it's not a simple "progress tracker"; it does not work on your
engineer's status reports -- instead Envision data-mines the engineering
man-hours used and tool licenses used, and billions of lines of other project
data -- plus your group's past history -- and uses Big Data voodoo hueristics
to extrapolate:
1.) exactly when your chip will tapeout;
2.) where the actual hold-ups are right now on your chip taping out;
3.) where licenses and engineers are not needed;
3.) and, where licenses and engineers are needed to unblock your project.
Read ESNUG 550 #5 to get the details. The Xilinx guys had some adventures
juggling 600 engineers and thousands of EDA tool licenses that Envision
untangled for them.
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OH, AND IT CATCHES THIEVES, TOO?: one user comment in with the others was a
little bit different.
It talked about "IP security" and "battle against the IP theft" which I had
not see the others mention. Maybe it was some NDA stuff? Anyway, ICM
is up to something new here that they hadn't spoke of last year...
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QUESTION ASKED:
Q: "What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific EDA tools
you've seen this year? WHY did they interest you?"
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IC MANAGE "ENVISION" TAPEOUT PREDICTOR
The ICM "Envision" big data analytics tool looked interesting.
Some of their examples at DAC were impressive as to how the system
tracked data across the design life cycle.
I could see Envision being useful, especially when design projects
are distributed across groups and multiple sites.
It would be good for tracking gating events in the design process.
You could use it initially for design status tracking. Then as you
build up more data across designs, you could then use it as a way to
optimize resources.
The history would give you an idea what timeline and server/tool
resources for a design, such as licensing data. Depending on the
data, you could potentially abstract user resources also.
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IC Manage Envision
IC Manage has the best design management tool in the market today.
Their multi-site repository management is seamless & efficient.
Their Envision analytics part is a new addition and helps a lot for
program management.
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Envision Big Data Predictive Analytics helps you:
- Track all you invested in your design
- Manage your IP
- Manage IP security
- Track your costs
- Battle against the IP theft
Envision seems like it could be used to improve your product delivery
time and reduce your time invested.
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IC Manage is definitely working on the right problems with Envision,
this is a major challenge that the IC industry must solve.
Envision offers enormous potential value to customers where schedule and
cost reduction are the crucial competitive differentiators.
They are bringing the right mix of vision, value, and internal (machine
learning, distributed computation) technology.
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Envision big data analytics tool seemed very useful.
I liked that it can help with current design projects by taking the log
file data and design data from your past design work.
It then looks for similarities between the past work and your present
work.
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IC Manage Envision was a great demo at DAC -- the tool will aggregate all
your data, and its big data analytics has lots of potential.
Envision compiles your data in one database, then mines the data to
project your future tapeout dates.
You can look at your schedule points of contention, and basically get an
unlimited amount of information.
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IC Manage Envision - the impression I had is that IC Manage built a nice
infrastructure here.
The infrastructure allows you to add your data points from your past
projects, from your current project, and then give you projections as to
when the project will finish.
I don't remember if Envision works standalone or if it talks to other
commerial project mgmt SW (to automatically get their data).
- I got the impression that the Envision ships with a few data inputs
that it 'requests', and that it is up to the users to add
whatever other data they have, or think could help.
- It seems that it could be further tailored to design/verification
projects -- with many more suggestions and internal knowledge and
heuristics targeted at these kinds of projects.
I assume that very similar work, ending with very similar results,
could be done by many of Envision's users, to add the relevant
data that they have, and to 'teach' Envision some relevant expert
knowledge and heuristics (at least by users in the same field).
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IC Manage Envision is a big data tool. You can use it to track your
project status, to predict if your projects are on schedule, and also
what the resources you need to meet your schedule. For example:
- Justifying where you need more tools, such as how many Spectre
licenses, verification and other licenses
- Engineering resources, including designers, layout engineers and
verification engineers.
We use 3rd party tools for some of this, but it's not very good, while
Envision has a nicely structured interface to track these items.
Envision would be a great thing for project managers and their managers
to have. (It's not for every designer to use like IC Manage GDP. It's
a management tool that makes it so you don't have to ask 600 engineers
to write bullshit weekly status report Instead Envision "sees" what
everyone is doing to figure out the real status of your chip.)
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IC Manage presented their Envision tool. The idea sounds fascinating.
Since we have the data, why don't we make the most of it?
What can we learn from data, tool and license usage patterns? Can our
design resource needs become more predictable?
In our company, not all designs are alike, nor are our design leads
alike.
I would love to see the data, but it is hard to know if extracting and
analyzing all that data would pay-off in resource and schedule
management.
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IC Manage Envision sounded interesting -- it hooks up with your source
revision control system
- To see churn
- To have a better indication of when the project is done
- Do analysis on adding employees.
You could use it to forecast time deadlines based on previous projects,
after going through a couple of cycles. Resource optimization seemed
very interesting, too.
The differentiator is what analytics IC Manage uses to base its
predictions on.
- As with anything, it's all about the source -- it has to
be the right input.
- If you feed a bunch of CSV data, can it find correlations?
We don't collect data, but after seeing the Envision demo, I think we
should. E.g. have a database where we collect stats on the jobs we run.
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Related Articles
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