( DAC 01 Item 2 ) ---------------------------------------------- [ 7/31/01 ]
Subject: Syncronicity, Runtime, GoalSmith, Platform, Beach, Translogic
THANKS, BUT NO THANKS: This was the second most disliked catagory of "EDA"
tools (behind C/C++ based design). I got a lot of letters for engineers
saying that they didn't need commercial Design Colaboration tools and
that "CVS, SCCS, and RCS work quite well, thank you". After that, a lot of
people complained about Syncronicity and they liked LSF -- but thought quite
openly of using the free Sun tool that does the same thing LSF does.
"Waste of my time! I looked briefly into these design colaboration
tools to see what they were about and soon ran from them. I believe
my team requirements and/or designs don't need this level of control.
The overhead is not required."
- Phil Kuglin, Credence Systems Corp.
"We took a long hard look at Synchronicity and decided we get the best
bang for the bucks from CVS, Sourceforge & other open software. We
looked at some other flow tools, but ultimately decided to roll our
own for the time being. Our bias is to buy, not develop tools, but
we don't see anything worth the price yet."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We're using a basic revision control system that works cross platform
(i.e. NT and Solaris). StarTeam. For the most part we've had very
good luck with the tool... if you don't bring about the time that the
server crapped out and we tried to rebuild from tape backup, but the
StarTeam data base was corrupted and we lost the whole tree..."
- Gzim Derti, Improv Systems
"We roll our eyes on stuff like this. We have design collaborations w/
another company, ST, and security concerns often stifle simple even
methods like VPN or even FTP sharing. Our strategy has always been to
develop our own IP which doesn't lead to many outside relationships
(other than with ST)."
- Tom Coonan, Scientific Atlanta
"Do I have time to evaluate these tools? Perhaps in a large company.
What about MAKE/CVS, etc.? Free and probably easier to use! Show me
the compelling need even though we already have multiple sites."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"I am the Synchronicity sysop at Nortel Networks. We use DesignSync,
ProjectSync, and IPGear. We have some 20 active design projects
using DesignSync and ProjectSync with a total of between 450 and
470 users, globally distributed. We also have several external
companies accessing our design databases. Admin is handled by 3
people (including myself). We have been using these tools for
approximately 3 years.
Although not yet the perfect tool for design data management, it does
the job. Speed has been an issue, but has been greatly improved in
version 3.X. Our IPGear installation has been deployed for about 8
months, and relies heavily on DesignSync and ProjectSync to rev
control IP offerings."
- Roger Vandenberg, Nortel Networks
"Syncronicity has some rather cool features to it (like mirroring with
links to a local cache) but it certainly seems dog-slow."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We have and use Synchronicity's IP-Gear and Platform Computing's LSF.
Both tools can really help to manage the work of designers and IP
developers. We need to use both more and more effectively. As with
most tools, it comes down to education and bandwidth."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Synchronicity seems to be the only viable player for true cross site
design support. Version 3.1 (the new version) is much better;
significantly more stable. It is better in the backend where the are
fewer checkin/out's per day as it has some performance issues.
Interweave is very cool. I think that the power users will balk.
However, at my company we have many very full custom oriented users
who very occasionally do some HLD - specifically a blended design
style. Interweave looks to be excellent at helping them."
We have an internally developed tool. Platform is pretty expensive
for what you get."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"I looked at Synchronicity a couple of years ago. It looked really cool
but a bit overkill for a small design team. Personally, I think it's
stupid for anyone with more than 3 computers not to use LSF or
something like it. LSF can be a pain to get setup, but it's well worth
the effort considering the price of the tools and computers you're
using it for!"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Synchronicity? - still needs work.
CreOsys? - very nice and interesting run between UNIX and PC world.
It works with Nescape or Explorer."
- Dan Clein, PMC-Sierra
"Synchronicity: I played with DesignSync about a year-and-a-half ago.
Wasn't very impressed with it's stability or performance. From what
I've heard though, they've cleaned it up quite a bit. The real value
comes with ProjectSync. No earth-shaking technology in either tool,
but the hooks into Cadence gives it the edge in automation, and that's
the only way that any of these "Flow Management" tools has a chance
to catch on.
Platform Computing: Sounds interesting. Might be worth a look."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Synchronicity is cool."
- Sean Smith, Cisco Systems
"Synchronicity is overpriced and does not work properly.
Platform Computing's seat price is massively overpriced. LSF
integration with Synopsys ACS is also overhyped ('make -j <n>'
is the key technology to this.)"
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We are unlikely to utilize most design collaboration tools. I have
some interest in Platform Computing/LSF, but with 21 hosts, it's not
too difficult to manage jobs manually."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"LSF (Load Sharing Facility) by Platform Computing
-------------------------------------------------
Platform Computing offers at least two versions of LSF: the Standard
Edition and the Professional Edition. Both versions support Linux on
Intel and Solaris on Sparc. They accept jobs submissions to
network-based queues. They automatically start jobs as resources
(i.e., CPU, license) become available. Their operations are highly
configurable. The LSF Professional Edition can be purchased for $1K
per CPU.
CODINE by Sun Microsystems
--------------------------
It is free! Further study is needed to determine if it is suitable
for our environment."
- Henry So of Mobilygen, Inc.
"One comment since you have Platform Computing listed here. We spoke
with them about various issues that we are having that are slow to be
addressed. They have a program they call "LSF Health Check" where an
AE comes out, collects information about your configuration, and we
assumed we would get some type of report about where we could improve
things. Two weeks later, we've heard nothing. Beginning to think this
was just a sales/marketing gimmick to figure out what more they can
sell us, sure hope not!
Also, Sun is pushing their Gridware product, an LSF competitor. Was in
an NDA session where they talked about their long term goals for this
product and how they would be making money on it. They at least have
a plan..."
- Scott Evans of Sonics, Inc.
"We use CVS and LSF. CVS used *correctly* is an amazing design
collaboration tool. LSF is also a nice tool, yet very expensive and
the freeware stuff is getting close in quality and functionality."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We already use LSF extensively. It has been a Godsend. It has taken
us a little while to get things configured so that everyone feels they
have access to the queues and they don't have to wait too long to get
important jobs into the queue; however, it has done wonders for our
efficiency and ability to kick off psuedo random simulations and just
let them go for a while. The other EDA companies should really thank
Platform since it has really increased the demand for simulation seats
and other tools that benefit from parallel runs."
- Duncan Halstead, LSI Logic
"The most interesting company I saw at DAC was GoalSmith,
www.goalsmith.com. The founder of this company invented his weekly
report software while he was a design manager at Cyrix. Cyrix (now
Via) gave him permission to commercialize it. He has solid ideas that
are proven in practice. I think this can save time, and improve the
usefulness and speed of weekly reports. An added benefit is that
the software performs scheduling based on the weekly reports."
- John McGehee of Voom, Inc.
"Beach Solution: Make a tool called Easi-Gen that automates
documentation writing. It has some sort of spec-writing input
that can then generate Verilog, VHDL, C and documentation.
www.beachsolutions.com."
- Peet James, Qualis Design
"Runtime Design Automation sells a tool to document and automate your
flow in a Tcl-like language. They say it is better than using "make"
because it tracks file access as the job is being done. It also does
LSF type job distribution. This is best for teams with a few
experienced people and a lot of newbies, or disjoint teams where
handoffs might be missed."
- John Weiland, Intrinsix
"I've used Runtime Design Automation's Flowtracer, which greatly speeds
up the build times for most projects. Flowtracer builds a "trace",
represented as a bipartite directed and acyclic graph, in which the
nodes represent either design data or CAD transactions, and makes for
very efficient project builds.
While the Flowtracer has it's own job queuing system, it is often
interfaced to the Platform Computing LSF system for job queuing and
resource management. I've recently started using the Sun GRD system
as well for job queuing and resource management on most of my Sun and
Linux compute nodes. GRD has the concept of a "transfer queue" that
allows me to also interface to remote systems that may be running LSF.
I would really classify Syncronicity, ClioSoft, and Simutest's Release
Manager under "configuration management" or "revision control" tools,
along with RCS. Often, the software staff at my clients already have
a "collaboration" process based on RCS, or another common system, so
we rarely get to use the specialized EDA versions.
The Mentor QuickUse Development System 3.0 looked interesting to me,
although I've not had a chance to test it for myself yet. It's a
logical extension from Mentor Workxpert to a web based collaboration
system like QDS."
- Tom Moxon of Moxon Design
"I have used RunTime Automation rather extensively over the past several
years. It's very powerful and configurable. We've used it for our
nightly computing resource management. It not only reduces the overall
turnaround time, it also makes nightly runs very easy and much more
predictable. It gave me a lot of control over what can be put into the
nightly run and what can not."
- Jian Bao, Intel
"And there was InterweaveTechnolgies with a platform for methodology
creation and management; Atrenta with policy-based checkers; and
others."
- Nagendra Cherukupalli, Cypress Semiconductor
"Cleosoft makes a tool like Synchronicity's. They say it bolts onto
Cadence extremely well, but will also interface with other vendor's
tools.
EDAptive Computing, Inc. is funded mostly by government contracts but
wants to get into more commercial work. They have a tool that they say
is similar to the Synchronicity tool but does more. It facilitates
real-time interaction between designers, rather than just saying "you
can't touch this file - Joe in Toledo is modifying it right now".
Creosys sells a web-based tool that's aimed at designer interaction.
It can allow multiple people to view the same layout over the internet.
Xtend sells web-based collaboration tools like synchronicity but say
their tools is aimed more at system design."
- John Weiland, Intrinsix
"Translogic's EASE:
I used that about 4-5 years ago (version 2.3?) when I still lived in
the Netherlands. I was fairly new to VHDL at that time so I didn't try
the fancy VHDL functionality like enumerate types with it. The manual
sucked at that time since it didn't describe the program at all, just
some state machine design stuff. But if you knew the program better
it worked pretty good. Fortunately they didn't implement stuff like
syntax checking on which the simulator does a better job. Escalade
Designbook's syntax checker was a pain in the ..."
- Menno Spijker, Mitel Semiconductor
"We evaluated Cliosoft a couple years ago and it looked like it could be
useful, but at the time our RCS system supplemented with scripts was
good enough that paying for something like Cliosoft was not felt
necessary. Have now transitioned to CVS over RCS to avoid some of
the scripting support needed."
- Tom Loftus, Intrinsix
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