( DVcon 05 Item 10 ) -------------------------------------------- [ 10/25/05 ]
Subject: Novas Debussy & Verdi, Veritools UnderTow
DEBUG ENVIRONMENTS -- This is everything with a Verilog/VHDL simulator that
is NOT a linter nor a code coverage tool -- generally these are the waveform
viewers and debug *environments* closely tied into the simulator.
2005 - "What linter/debug/coverage tools do you use? ... vs. the built-in
coverage in Synopsys VCS, Cadence NC, Mentor ModelSim, Aldec? ...
Novas DeBussy & nSchema & Verdi, and Veritools Undertow?"
Cadence built-in debug : ############################### 31%
Synopsys built-in debug : ########################## 26%
Mentor MTI built-in debug : ##################### 21%
Aldec built-in debug : ### 3%
Novas Debussy : ############################## 30%
Novas Verdi : ######### 9%
Novas nSchema : # 1%
Veritools UnderTow : #### 3%
As usual, Novas Debussy easily owns the 3rd party debug environment business.
Novas has been trying to parlay its Debussy success with its 2nd gen Verdi
tool -- but 9% Verdi hasn't been getting the 30% traction that Debussy has.
Undertow has a small group of devotees, too. But all these 3rd party debug
tools have the monster of "free" built-in debug tools peering over their
shoulders. "Why buy the cow when the milk is free?"
I only use built-in ModelSim and VCS debug capabilities at this time.
- Cliff Cummings of Sunburst Design
A few power users, including myself, use Debussy/Verdi. The sheep here
use the ModelSim debug environment.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Debussy & Verdi are great. I've trial tested both, but I cannot (at
two companies now) get the purchase price amortized across the time
savings. Too hard of a sell to management. When the cost of debuggers
approaches that of the simulators, management balks.
- Jeff Koehler of Ammasso, Inc.
I have a debugger in Cadence NC-Sim, one with Verisity Specman, and yet
another with Novas Debussy. I have a design entry/documentation tool
with Mentor HDL Designer. That gives me a total of 4 user interfaces
to accomplish very related tasks. Can someone merge these together?
- Niels Reimer of Agilent
No debug GUI, but will try the new Synopsys DVE.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Debussy. This is typically used for people who don't have access to
MTI's signal flow window. It is also useful for ASIC gate level
debugging, but we use the built-in MTI one more.
- [ Kenny from Southpark ]
We are happy with the ModelSim GUI as our debug environment.
- Jay Brown of Top Layer Networks
Debug: Synopsys built-in waveform viewer, along with Debussy
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We mainly use Debussy to look at gate level schematics and to look at
connectivity in RTL, not so much for wave viewing/debugging.
For waves, we mostly use Synopsys Virsim because it integrates well
with the rest of our Synopsys tools.
- K.C. Buckenmaier of Hifn, Inc.
We use Novas Debussy for debug.
- John Zook of Stargen
We have a small number of Debussy users who swear by it, and having
used it myself, I'll admit that it can be useful for tracing signals
through RTL, but most of the features I'd use are now in NC-Sim, so
I don't bother spending the time to build the RTL into a Debussy
database anymore. I guess the writing's probably on the wall for
our Debussy license.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Nova's Debussy for critical debugging; otherwise the Mentor's
ModelSim debugger or Cadence's debugger (SimVision) are sufficient.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Undertow has always been pretty decent.
- Justin Spangaro of Spangaro Systems
Undertow has a fanbase here.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Yes Undertow
- Marshall Johnson of Movaz Networks
DeBussy & Undertow are nice tools when working with imported IP.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Debussy/Verdi and Undertow on a daily basis. Waveform viewers are
a religious issue and people hate not being able to use their favorite.
We've looked at SpyGlass but haven't purchased it.
- Kevin Jones of Rambus
Debussy is no good for VHDL.
Undertow still has some issues but looks promising.
Looking at DesignAnalysis for linting.
Atrenta Spyglass priced themselves out.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Novas Debussy, but will reconsider when licenses expire. Novas
is making all of the new stuff (System Verilog and transaction support)
extra cost, and the total adds up quickly. It's still darn good, just
expensive.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Novas Verdi for waveform viewing and debugging. The ModelSim
waveform viewer is a little clunky...
- Tom Moxon of Moxon Design
Novas Debussy tools used extensively for debugging.
Atrenta SpyGlass used rarely, but has been known to locate problems
other tools have not found.
- Bob Warren of STmicroelectronics
Use Spyglass - it is useful. Would like to have greater capability to
create custom rules. Plan to acquire Debussy.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Debussy heavily used, for waveform and source browsing only.
Some migration to Cadence SimVision
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Novas Debussy & nSchema & Verdi
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We have been attempting to purchase Novas Debussy as replacement
of Signalscan for a year now. The evaluation of Debussy was good.
- Brien Anderson of Siemens Medical
We use Novas Debussy, but not Verdi. We are happy with Debussy.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Debussy & Verdi
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Debussy for nWave and nTrace. No use for Verdi at this point.
- Dan Joyce of Hewlett-Packard
For debuggers we use Novas Debussy. Verdi does not provide enough
value from Debussy.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
The Novas tools have been very user friendly and extremely useful
during debug. Unfortunately their System Verilog compatibility was
a little slow in maturing.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Novas Debussy for debug.
- Jonathan Craft of McData Corp.
We use Novas Debussy to view/debug gate level netlist.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Atrenta Spyglass, Novas Debussy.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Debussy and are really really happy with it. Now we have it, we
won't accept anymore to debug without it.
- Pascal Gouedo of STmicroelectronics
We have seriously investigated SpyGlass, we were looking for a good
linter, but it is much more then a linter, it is RTL analysis tool
and is rather expensive.
We use Debussy as RTL debugger, and are perfectly happy with it. We
evaluated Verdi and liked it but it wasn't compelling to pay extra.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We're pretty happy with our Novas Debussy debug environment, but
have some serious concerns that they will not support System Verilog
in time for when we want to use it more seriously. They've tried to
push us to Verdi a few times, but we don't see any benefit. If Verdi
turns out to be their only path to System Verilog, we'll likely
switch to a different debug tool.
- Jonathan Craft of McData Corp.
Verdi (successor to Debussy) is still my "go-to" tool for navigating
other people's RTL or synthesized netlists.
- John Busco of Nvidia
Comparing SimVision to Novas Debussy/Verdi, the latter seems to be
smarter in some aspects. Especially the temporal flow views are
a cool thing.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Have evaluated Debussy and Spyglass and was impressed, but think that
for return on investment they have only niche applications (to debug
legacy IP or large ICs built by many designers).
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Novas Debussy is a great tool, especially for gate-level sim debugs.
Sometimes we do get stuck with these tools, since we cannot dump
complete fsdb from big SoC simulations. Otherwise, we are using
Synopsys VCS built-in coverage for unit-level simulations.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Cadence HAL & Atrenta Spyglass / Novas Debussy / TransEDA
Vnavigator respectively for lint / debug / coverage. Goal should
be to have the same features for coverage built-in the simulators
than in standalone tools. It's not the case today.
- Olivier Haller of STMicroelectronics
We use Debussy/Verdi. It's a great tool. But to be honest the usage
is mostly for waveform viewing (much less activity on the sophisticated
flow diagram, x-trace, etc.) - and in this arena they will compete
against the free waveform viewers (Virsim is bundled with VCS for
example). Tough for Debussy, great for customers.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use and like Novas Debussy in addition to the debuggers that
come with the Cadence and Synopsys simulators.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Using Debussy/Verdi - very good tool
Evaluating Spyglass - most likely will be using it.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I kinda like Debussy for waveforms but I'll use whatever is going.
Sometimes I end up with $display etc anyway.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
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