(ICU 04 Item 11 ) ----------------------------------------------- [10/07/04]
Subject: Cadence Design Services
NO FREE LUNCH: The most common response to the Cadence Design Services
question was the word "expensive" or some reference to pricing. It came up
a lot. Beyond that there were no surprizes. Some customers had great
experiences with Cadence Design Services; others had nightmares with them.
It all depended on the individual engineers Cadence sent in on the contract.
What do you think about Cadence Design Services?
Expensive
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They're the Deion Sanders of engineering services -- pricing themselves
out of the market.
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Expensive.
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Have not used them, but my sense is that they are somewhat over priced.
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Expensive! But high quality.
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In my previous company it was good. (I did not have to pay the bill.)
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Haven't used them recently. Overpriced the last time I talked to them.
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Never used them. Our company is cost conscious.
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They have great and capable people, but they don't usually implement their
tasks the way we want it. They are very expensive. They're mostly better
for support and only then for real scripting, unless they really work for
us almost exclusively.
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good but expensive
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If only... My company is far too "frugal" for such things.
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Too expensive
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Haven't used them lately. Expensive.
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We have had suprisingly good results with Design Services. I started out
as a complete skeptic (from bad experience 5 years ago), and have found
that things have changed very much in the better direction.
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Don't use it. Sometimes Cadence denies users documentation to force them
to pay Cadence Design Services to do a job for them.
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Depends on the engineer. If you find a good one, hang onto him. There's
been lots of turn-around and downsizing in their design services.
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Argh, landlubbers, there be pirates here.
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VCAD: so-so experience. Often the knowledge passes in the wrong
direction. From us to the VCAD engineers who do cannot
properly handle the Cadence tools.
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I have worked with Cadence Design Services on a couple projects. I think
when a project is understood and well defined by the customer, CDN Design
Services can do good job. For example, Design Services did place and
route service for my group and completed it successful. In this case, my
group understood exactly what needed to be done and were able to set
expectations with Design Services. In another case, Design Services was
hired to develope an ASIC flow for my group. My group and I gave input
and only a few requirements to Design Services. Design Services needed
to plan and then help my group execute the project. Design Services lost
direction and were not able to complete the project.
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Let's see - these are the guys that produce all that IP that doesn't work,
right? We try not to interact with them.
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We used them in a design project for P&R 2-3 years ago. It was a
nightmare. To many iterations made it finish late.
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CDF is great. VCAD is a good resource because of their tool knowledge
and access.
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Quite good. Turnaround time is slower than doing things in-house, but
at least they have the latest software.
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Never used them, but we have hired some smart design people from them.
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My experience is 2 years ago. At that time, CDS had mostly inexperienced
people, they were my third choice behind Mentor Graphics Consulting, and
independent contractors.
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In a few occasions I had to work with them and I was impressed with the
level of dedication. They have very good support from inside CDN and some
are very technical. Ethics at the highest level. In one case their rep
worked overtime (unpaid) to solve technical issues that our internal
person left and went to a hockey game. I was impressed.
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We used P&R service on the past, due to work overload here, but abandoned
since they took much more time than us and the results weren't very good.
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A lot of used car bait and switch -- big time dollars for professionals,
and most of the time the staff on the project are even LESS knowledgeable
and tool familiar than the customer with the problem. Second issue is
most Cadence Services folks are CAD geeks rather than chip designers so
a lot of the solutions are "elegant" but just not practical to use.
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I had very good experience with a quick turnaround project where we were
doing a custom RF chip, but we had a small (few K instances) synthesized
digital block to drop in. We didn't have P&R tools, so we contracted to
CDN. They did an excellent job and worked through a number of iterations.
Their engineers were very professional and supportive. (The work was done
in the VCAD group, I'm not sure if this is part of the Design Services
group or not.)
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Good experience with them, they provided a very knowledgeable engineer
who was proficient with the tools and very helpful.
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Cadence Design Services: never used them, unlikely to in the near future.
Seem to have shed their "let us in and we'll poach all your staff" image
that they suffered from in 1999-2000, but that's pure hearsay.
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