( DAC 99 Item 38 ) ----------------------------------------------- [6/25/99]

    "For the world of Place and Route things are about the same if you want
     to tapeout prior DAC 2000.  There were several new players on the
     field rolling out products - Magma, and Snaketech, being the most
     prominent - but their technologies, features and support need about
     another year before they are ready for production environments.  As an
     example of too early a release - the Magma P&R environment while
     supporting timing driven layout - only targets +/- 15% timing accuracy
     and does not allow an ECO loop without going back to the floorplanning
     stage.  The leaders are still Avanti with Apollo and Cadence with
     Silicon Ensemble.  Silicon Ensemble did not roll out and new
     groundbreaking features at the show - just some standard updates and
     patches.  Avanti did rollout their new 'connectivity-based' layout
     editor 'Discovery' which allows for polygon edits to the design INSIDE
     the P&R environment which means that ECO, timing and routing info is
     not lost through export-import with GDSII.  For mixed signal design and
     'non-standard application' processes this is a major advantage as you
     can now tweak the power supply and bias lines to meet 'non-timing'
     critical performance.  Gambit's design software was acquired by
     Synopsys in Q1 and was not listed as a currently available standalone
     commercial product."  ( http://www.gambit.com )

         - an anon engineer