(ICU 04 Item 4 ) ------------------------------------------------ [10/07/04]
Subject: Installing Cadence Tools
CUSTOM TOOLS & CUSTOM INSTALLS: Although most Cadence tools seem fairly
easy to install, Virtuoso and its Custom IC bretheren are, in the eyes of
manys users, a nightmare to intall. A little irony there. The tools for
Custom design neeed a custom install -- nothing off-the-rack there!
In addition, licensing is still a headache even for the non-Custom guys.
What's it like setting up and/or installing Cadence tools?
Easy and straighforward: ########################### 53%
a so-so experience: ################ 31%
a nightmare: ######### 17%
Cadence has an easy to use install program. Where I usually have trouble
is the download page for software only works on Microsoft IE, even though
the software I am installing is for Unix. I usually end up just using
FTP directly.
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Setting up is more or less a small nightmare. One thing I don't
understand is why they, for program updates, they call it USR's, need two
sets of CD ROMs, the base installation and the USR. Why can't they bring
up an update with only of one set of CD ROMs?
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Easy install -- Soc Encounter
Hard install -- Virtuoso
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Freaking nightmare for a first time Custom user.
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Even a simple flow like full Custom has so many dependencies and other
things contingent upon it that it takes forever to get reasonable
productivity. I seems their focus is on extracting high $$ consulting
fees out of you.
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Still a nightmare. Licensing is way too confusing; too many license
feature numbers for each little aspect of a program. Give me a
Windows-like Setup.exe script, and have the software occasionally check
licenses from Cadence servers through the internet.
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Tools are easy to setup. I've setup FE, SE, PKS, BuildGates. I found
all easy to setup.
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Set up is reasonably easy. The distributions are huge, though, so
downloading and installing on several machines can be very tedious.
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So-so. No particular roadblocks.
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So-so on average. Some tools are easier than others. Conformal
is easy. Chameleon is tricky since we have a custom release.
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I am so thankful, that I don't have to do that anymore. Especially ISR's
are painful. "Copy installation and apply hotfix".... good morning.... If
a company uses many tools and keeps up to date with the patches, then you
can easily fill 10 G in a month.
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Installation is not so bad. However, there are customization issues that
still have not been addressed. Specifically, $CDS_SITE doesn't work for
everything. If it doesn't work for EVERYTHING, it doesn't work at all.
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It's so-so. You have to untar and then run a csh script to install. The
thing I hate is you always need to have the base version tar file handy.
Each newer release is not a stand alone entity and the install script
always prompt you for the base release files. And the release note is not
up-to-date. It's hard to figure out what get fixed in a new release.
(All this refers to the IC custom tools, Virtuoso, Composer etc.)
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Easy and straightforward. DFII, PKS, ICC are real easy to install; don't
know about the others.
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