> The Synopsys Marketing press release went on to claim:
>
>     "Unlike competing tools, the TetraMAX solution does not require
>      partitioning of a large SoC to run ATPG separately on each block;
>      instead it can generate patterns for the entire design at once."
>
> So as a hands-on TetraMAX user, are you seeing Mentor FastScan choke on
> your big chips?  Is FastScan pitifully crying like a baby for partitioning
> (like how Synopsys Marketing implies in this press release) while TetraMAX
> gleefully breezes through your chip like hot knife through butter?
>
>     - from http://www.deepchip.com/wiretap/061102.html


From: Greg Aldrich <greg_aldrich=user domain=mentor.com>

Hi, John,

Synopsys Marketing must be referring to some other competitor, since Mentor
TestKompress and FastScan ATPG tools have been used on large complex designs
without any partitioning of the pattern generation process.  Our compression
and ATPG does not require partitioning or block isolation and can generate
patterns for the complete design in one shot -- even if the compression
logic was implemented separately for each sub-block.

Concerning performance, everybody is getting faster.

At ITC, we introduced ATPG Accelerator that allows our users to distribute
their ATPG runs for either TestKompress or FastScan across a network of
processors.  Some of our Mentor customer benchmarks reported improvements of
over 18X in ATPG run times when distributing across a grid -- and we
support any grid management tool.

I cannot comment on Tetramax performance since I have no direct experience
with that product.  Our 18X improvement in run time comes directly from one
of our customers.

As you know, run times for ATPG are very design dependent and also depend on
what type of patterns (stuck-at, transition, bridging, etc) are generated,
so providing a blanket number is not that straight forward.

What I can tell you is that both our FastScan and TestKompress ATPG runtimes
on a single CPU have improved on average about 4X over the last 24 months,
based on a set of real industry designs we use for performance regression
testing.  This is on top of what we have done with distributed ATPG.

    - Greg Aldrich
      Mentor Graphics Corp.                      Wilsonville, OR


  Editor's Note: Loved this "competing tools" trick Synopsys Marketing
  tried.  Everyone reads it as Mentor FastScan because they're their big
  ATPG rival, but legally Synopsys can claim they were talking about
  someone else!  Don'tcha just love EDA press releases, folks?  - John