( DVcon 05 Item 11 ) -------------------------------------------- [ 10/25/05 ]
Subject: Mentor HDL Designer (Renoir), Summit Visual Elite
LESS LOVE -- In 2004, 83% of users hated graphical design entry tools like
Mentor HDL Designer (Renoir) and Summit Visual Elite. In 2005, that hate
has jumped up to 89% of users. Ouch.
2004 - "How about graphical design entry tools like Summit
Visual Elite or Mentor HDL Designer (Renoir)?"
Hate : ################################# 83%
Like : ####### 17%
2005 - "How about graphical design entry tools like Summit
Visual Elite or Mentor HDL Designer (Renoir)?"
don't use : #################################### 89%
Summit Visual Elite : #### 4%
Mentor HDL Designer : #### 4%
homebrew GUI tool : # 1%
Sorry about not being more specific on Renoir and Summit tool use in last
year's survey on this question. Being so dis-used, I didn't think that stat
was important at the time. My bad.
HDL Designer (Renoir) is for the people who are only given the rounded
end scissors for fear of they'll cut themselves with the pointy ended
scissors.
- [ Kenny from Southpark ]
HDL Designer is used once in a while to generate block diagrams.
- William Mills of Northrop Grumman Corp.
Tried to use HDL Designer. It just got in the way.
- Greg Tumbush of Starkey Labs.
I personally don't believe in tools like Renoir.
- Christian Mautner of Integrated Device Technologies
Have used HDL Designer in the past but we are remixing the seats to gain
additional simulators.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
For graphical creation of blocks and FSM's, both Mentor HDL Designer
and Summit Visual Elite are used here.
- Brien Anderson of Siemens Medical
Design entry tools IMHO, actually slow progress. We use an in-house
Verilog build/stitch tool for block and chip assembly.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We used to use Visual Elite, but it's fallen out of usage really; we
didn't get enough benefit, the RTL it produced was almost impenetrable,
and in most cases, well-written code is just as good.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Design Entry - Hey its EMACS/EMACS/EMACS - do you need anything else?
- Rajen Ramchandani of Mindspeed Technologies
We use emacs for design entry!
- John Zook of Stargen
Graphical entry tools are Evil.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I've seen Visual Elite and have experimented some w/ Platform Express,
but haven't used any of these tools seriously yet.
- George Gorman of LSI Logic
Will soon replace Visual Elite with HDL Designer Suite and will only
then be able to provide comment.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We liked Visual Elite which we evaluated for its SytemC capabilities.
- Frank Vorstenbosch of Telecom Modus Ltd.
Any graphical design entry tools such as Mentor HDL Designer is a waste
of time. I have actually used it, and it is a productivity killer.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Summit Visual Elite for historic reasons. It is useful when
you have to go through other designers designs. We are having a look
at Renoir.
- Pascal Gouedo of STmicroelectronics
We do still use Summit Visual Elite on a limited usage model (state
machine entry). It works well for this purpose and is easy to use.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Never use Summit or Renoir tools. It's not useful except for doing
reports.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Summit stuff was a bit hokey when I looked at it years ago but its
probably improved since then. Renoir was nice to use when I looked at
it but I'm not sure if GUIs really add any productivity to a proficient
coder/designer. It might be good for keeping rookies from screwing up
too much if they can cope with the discipline it imposes, but adds even
more things for them to learn and more stuff for the architect/project
manager to manage.
- Justin Spangaro of Spangaro Systems
Renoir and similar graphical entry tools make it easier to compare the
implementationwith the architectural intent, especially for modules
that have a team of "owners".
For simple functions direct entry of Verilog code is more efficient.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
No use. Did an evaluation of some the design entry tools a while ago,
but found them of limited use.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Summit Visual Elite is good but unstable. It corrupts in Exceed once
in a while.
- Peng Hong of Datang Microelectronics China
Design entry tools are sold to managers at DAC. Real engineers don't
use them.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I'd like to use Mentor HDL Designer, but it's too pricey for every
seat per engineer...
- Tom Moxon of Moxon Design
A few people here use an idiotic internally developed Microsoft Word
extension, called MAS2RTL, for design entry. This thing is an
abomination and whoever is responsible for it should be flogged.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Summit Visual Elite - very good tool, but unfortunately datas and HDL
objects are in a proprietary format.
HDL Designer (Renoir) -- pros the data base is more open than Summit
tools. cons it is easier to use Summit tool than HDL Designer.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We have used Visual Elite for 7-8 years and are very happy with it.
- Tom Paulson of Qlogic
I wasn't impressed with Renoir.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Renoir - entry level, not quite ready for regular use.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Design entry: Limited use of HDL Designer.
- Niels Reimer of Agilent
Design entry tools are crutches that make poorly portable code.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
A co-worker uses something called Visual HDL. I use vi and perl.
- Tom Mannos of Sandia National Labs
These are for people who can't deal with RTL.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I do like the visualization tools like Renoir, but not for coding a
system. I find them highly useful to explore the architecture of
inherited code. You can quickly assess the structure of the code
and how modules interconnect when you work with reused code.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
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