( SNUG 04 Item 9 ) ----------------------------------------------- [08/11/04]
Subject: Cadence Virtuoso, Avanti Cosmos, SiCanvas Laker, Avanti Saber
THIS IS EMBARRASSING: If you look at the Dataquest stats for the custom
layout market, you'll find that Synopsys Avanti Cosmos is the No. 6 tool:
Dataquest FY 2002 Custom Layout Market (in $ Millions)
Cadence Virtuoso ########################################## $129.6 (84%)
Seiko ##### $10.8 (7%)
Mentor IC Station #### $7.7 (5%)
Sagantec # $2.5 (2%)
Silvaco # $2.1 (1%)
Avanti Cosmos # $1.4 (1%)
Tanner L-Edit # $0.7 (1%)
Do the math and you'll find that the Avanti Cosmos marketshare is actually
less than 1% here. It needed rounding to bring it up to 1%. And to add
insult to injury, not one customer stood up and spoke in favor of Cosmos.
Not one! How embarrassing. Cadence Virtuoso rules the custom layout market.
4.) What do you think of the custom layout market? In your eyes, how
does Synopsys Cosmos fare vs. Cadence Virtuoso or SiCanvas Laker?
Cadence Virtuoso is unchallenged for custom layout. Period. No
question.
- Lynn Hall of Medtronics
I was looking at the Avanti Cosmos development for the last 3 years,
but do not know anybody who is a happy customer.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cosmos-LE:
It's a little better than cutting rubylith I guess. I am still amazed
today after using the tool for 6 months that anyone would have the balls
to actually try to sell something this bad. Even though we sort of
got it thrown in for free with all the digital tools, I still feel
ripped off. What a piece of crap! I used tools 15 years ago that were
far better polygon pushers.
Trying to do ANYTHING with Cosmos is a major exercise in frustration.
Even the most simple move/copy/stretch operations are aggravating.
Cosmos lacks many of the basic polygon manipulation features that exist
in other tools. Its SDL/pcell capabilities are also pretty primitive.
Cosmos takes about 5-10x the amount of time to accomplish layout vs
Mentor IC Station for example.
I would like to say something good about Cosmos but nothing comes to
mind. By the way, did I mention it crashes a lot?
Most of my experience is with Mentor IC Station. To say the difference
between the tools is night and day would be a huge understatement. It's
like comparing a Model T to a Ferrari. All the features I took for
granted in IC Station don't even exist in Cosmos.
Bottom line, don't waste your time (or money) with Cosmos.
- Robert Maxwell of Mediaworks-ISI
We use Cadence Composer and Virtuoso. Cadence seems to have a lock on
the custom design market. Everyone I talked to uses Cadence for
custom/transistor level design. Laker is a much better layout tool
than Virtuoso. But until they have an integrated schematic capture
tool AND an equivlent simulation environment like Cadence Analog Artist,
it will be very hard to convince people to switch to Laker.
- Joe Dao of Aeluros, Inc.
Formerly and currently using internal tools. Tried Cosmos. Gave up.
Turning on Virtuoso. No data on Laker, though hear good reports.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
All my analog friends are using Virtuoso.
- Edmond Tam of Global Locate, Inc.
We use Cadence Virtuso for our mixed-signal design. Especially for
state-of-the-art analog design, the Cadence environment is by far the
most complete, reliable and known within the analog design community.
Synopsys is trying to enter this market with a good toolset, Cosmos,
but probably it is not good enough to convince most of the current
Cadence users to change quickly their design environment. It's
definitely a hard challenge for Synopsys Cosmos...
- Marcello Vena of Xignal Technologies AG
I use Virtuoso. Never heard of anyone using Cosmos or SiCanvas for
custom layout. But Tanner tools were used a lot. What about Tanner
tools?
- Klaus Vongehr of Philips Semiconductors
I've used Cadence Virtuoso for 5 years and, though it takes some getting
used to, is quite good as far as polygon pushing. I do HATE their SKILL
interface language, though. Scripting anything is a nightmare. It also
needs a much better tie-in to accurate extraction tools.
- Gord Allan of Carleton University (Canada)
We use Virtuoso.
- Andrew Bell of PMC-Sierra, Inc.
Virtuoso has been there for a long long time. Other than the database
advantage (for extraction, etc.), Synopsys Cosmos faces a tough up hill
battle. Haven't heard of SiCanvas.
- Haiming Jin of Intel
We use Cadence for full custom layout.
- Jean-Paul Morin of STMicroelectronics
Virtuoso is the industry standard and the 'official' custom layout
environment at Freescale Semiconductor. Personally I prefer the
Mentor custom layout tools and the general user-friendliness of
Ample vs. Skill, and would use them if I didn't have to be a team
player and use the official stuff.
When I last looked at Laker at DAC 2002, it was weak in some areas
(i.e. schematic driven layout) and had no compelling value-add which
could inspire me to fight the battle within Freescale to unseat
Virtuoso as our official custom layout environment. I recently
had a long phone conversation with an AE from Silicon Canvas and was
not convinced that anything significant enough had changed to spur me
to take another look at Laker.
- Jonathan Ellis of Freescale
In the past I've used Virtuoso and from what I can see, it has a lock
on the analog market.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use neither. We use Tanner L-Edit.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I would say Cosmos is way behind Virtuoso. Cosmos layout only just
getting the features Cadence Virtuoso has had for the last five years,
though some of its place/rubber banding features are better than
Virtuoso -- plus Cosmos has online DRC check. Parasitic simulation and
cross-probing is a joke in Cosmos. The latest HSPICE RF isn't even
integrated at a basic level. Currently only layout with schematic.
Cheap Tcl GUI into HSPICE.
Also Synopsys has little support from Vendors, and in itself doesn't
have the manpower to create proper analog flows PDKs for its tools.
In the past I've found lots of problems in Vendors Kits that have
required sequential new versions of Hercules/Star-RCXT to get flows
working to even a basic level.
Mainly found that you are 2 to 10 times more productive using Cadence
than Synopsys for analog design flows.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Only Cadence Virtuoso here - very old and stable versions being used.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I think Virtuoso is good and most popular.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We still use a lot of Cadence Virtuoso environment, but I believe this
is because of historic reasons. Designers are most used to and more
productive in the Cadence framework. Most of the foundries usually
supply all setup for Cadence environments (PDK's) while for other tools
you need to set it up by yourself.
- Marco Oliveira of Chipidea Microelectronica
Cosmos is third, Virtuoso second, Laker first. Cosmos seemed to have
fewer features, or else they seemed awkward.
- Erica Wickstrom of PMC-Sierra
Synopsys schematic tool is a renovated version of Saber, which was not
developed for IC schematics, but for mixed domain high level
simulations. The layout tool also has a long history, and they were
recently brought together. The design kit support seemed week. Cadence
Virtuoso is definitely the dominant player and the schematic and layout
tools work together fairly well, particularly with Virtuoso-XL.
Synopsys' list price for Cosmos was higher than Cadence, so there is no
reason to buy it as a point solution.
- Brett Warneke of Dust Networks
Clearly Cadence Virtuoso has majority of the mind share with existing
installations. Synopsys Cosmos is trying to make a play and is willing
to put work into helping customers transition. SiCanvas Laker looks
like a slick tool worth some investigation. Their interface mimicks
that of Virtuoso but the feature set is far superior.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cadence Virtuoso should be the best.
- Massimo Scipioni of STmicroelectronics
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