( DVcon 07 Item 4 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 04/24/07 ]
Subject: Atrenta Spyglass, Synopsys Leda, Cadence HAL, 0-In CheckList
LINTERS & COVERAGE -- As usual, the most popular non-built-in linter people
yarped about using was Atrenta Spyglass. Lots of engineers like it, but it
still has a tough uphill fight against those *free* built-in tools.
2007 - "Which linter/coverage tool(s) do you use? Atrenta SpyGlass,
Cadence HAL, Synopsys Leda, Mentor DesignAnalyst, TransEDA or
do you use only the built-in linter/coverage in Synopsys VCS,
Cadence NC-Sim, Mentor ModelSim, Aldec? Please be specific."
Cadence built-in : ######################## 24.0%
Cadence HAL : ########### 11.3%
Verisity : ## 2.0%
Synopsys built-in : ############################ 28.2%
Synopsys LEDA : ##################### 20.8%
Mentor MTI built-in : ####################### 23.0%
Mentor DesignAnalyst : ## 1.9%
0-In CheckList : ## 1.6%
Aldec built-in : ## 2.4%
Atrenta Spyglass : ########################## 25.9%
Novas nLint : ### 2.7%
TransEDA : ## 2.2%
Certess Certitude : # 1.1%
Axiom : # 0.8%
homegrown : ## 1.9%
It must not be that bad, though, for the Atrenta Spyglass folks because if
you look at their 2005 mindshare numbers and the 2007 numbers:
Atrenta Spyglass 2005 : ################## 18.0%
Atrenta Spyglass 2007 : ########################## 25.9%
They must be doing something right!
What's next? The Atrenta guys will be selling refrigerators to Eskimos?
They can't get too cocky, though; the glass-half-full view here is that
Spyglass is being used in 25.9% of projects; the glass-half-empty view is
that Spyglass is NOT being used in 74.1% of projects. The Atrenta guys
are doing well but they have their work cut out for them.
My other surprize from reading the user comments was how many engineers were
using Synopsys LEDA in a Cadence or a Mentor simulator flow. I honestly
thought LEDA was just one of those cheesy ride-along-with-VCS tools put in
a fake separate group just so Synopsys salesdroids could artificially try to
charge more for it; but it isn't. Hmmmm...
Looking a second time around at the customer comments I've noticed that LEDA
seems to be getting a lot of abuse from its dissatisfied users. Ouch!
Primarily SpyGlass. We have some Leda and HAL usage, too.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Linter: Atrenta Spyglass
Coverage: VCS
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Leda, build in coverage. Synopsys DVE.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Synopsys Leda (which we have not been very happy with in
regards to System Verilog)
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Synopsys Leda, though it REALLY sucks.
Maybe Atrenta SpyGlass in the future.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Licenses of Leda are available in the company, but usage is *very* low.
I know why. It's a damn royal pain to use their rule coding engine.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Leda is used but is crap.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We currently use Synopsys Leda for linting but do not like the tool. It
crashes a lot, its not very user friendly, and has some bug issues. We
have evaluated Atrenta Spyglass and are in the process of trying to get
approval to purchase in the near future.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Synopsys Leda and a tool called HDLLint from Everest Design
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Synopsys Leda, but mourn the death of Verilint.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cadence HAL mostly in command line mode just to check syntax and basic
problems. I miss Verilint though.
- Sean McGee of LifeSize Communications
We have Leda, but usage (and value) is low.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Expect to move to nLint - Leda doesn't change lint checks based on
translate_on/off pragmas. HAL looked to have similar problems.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cadence HAL
I just ran it on 100,000 lines of newly written, un-simulated code and
got 100,000 warnings. After removing the warnings that I didn't care
about, there were under 1000 "real" warnings.
- Phil Americus of Xelerated
We use Synopsys Leda. We used Cadence HAL in the past and found that it
didn't catch many problems. Also IMHO Leda seems to be more tailored to
synthesis/DFT checks then HAL.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Atrenta SpyGlass. Synopsys VCS lint occasionally, but it never tells
us anything interesting.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
TransEDA
- Greg Tumbush of AMI Semiconductor
We use both Spyglass and HAL for linter.
Now using NC-Sim built-in coverage tool because I am now forced to.
I really preferred vNavigator from TransEDA.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cadence HAL
- George Gorman of LSI
Spyglass
- Andreas Dieckmann of Siemens
We use the Aldec Active-HDL's coverage tools. They have code coverage,
toggle coverage, expression coverage, statement and branch coverage,
and a Design Profiler to allow us to debug code very quickly and
efficiently.
Their HDL tools have become very sophisticated in the past 5 years.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We just use the linter and coverage tool built into VCS. We tried the
code coverage tool in Aldec, but it is crap.
- Samir Patel of Tarari
Cadence HAL, Novas nLint
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Use TransEDA coverage mostly, but also ModelSim coverage when we have to
(we prefer not to though).
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cadence HAL. We use built-in linter in Cadence NC-SIM.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use multiple linters. Main is Atrenta SpyGlass. We also (mis)use the
formal verification tools as linter.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Mentor DesignAnalyst
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Atrenta SpyGlass (and still Verilint as a quick check)
- Paul Davies of Cisco
MENT & CDN Build in, Onespin Solution Gatecheck, and inhouse-solution
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We're using SpyGlass as a final signoff, and Cadence HAL integrated
into the normal check-in process.
- Kelly Larson of Analog Devices
Cadence HAL
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We have SpyGlass built into our flow. Its noisy but finds DFT issues
for us. We had to put a usable wrapper around it to get people to
actually use it.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
HAL. But we don't do much linting in general.
- Gautham Kamath of Cirrus Logic
HAL. Not very good (reported several bugs), but we are a Cadence house
and it was thrown in for "free".
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Cadence's HAL, Synopsys Leda, Novas nLint, 0-in CheckList and
CDC. We also find useful data comes from simply running NC-Verilog
and Synopsys elaborate on all blocks.
Used to run Spyglass but it crashed too many times when my guys
checked in anything with a new or "interesting" coding style.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Axiom built in coverage, Axiom lint, Axiom waveform.
- Andrew Peebles of Cortina Systems
I use the linting in my simulation tools, I find Verilator to be a more
strict linter.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Coverage: Modelsim + TransEDA
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Synopsys Leda
- Ambar Sarkar of Paradigm Works
Synopsys LEDA for lint. Synopsys VCS built-in for coverage.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use the tools built into Mentor hdl_designer and modelsim for
linting checks and code coverage. We also have a number of inhouse
scripts that are used for simple linting checks.
- Jeremy Ellis of Ericsson
We use VCS built in function plus 0-In and Jasper built in checks.
- Marty Deneroff of D.E. Shaw
Atrenta SpyGlass and OneSpin GateCheck and built-in Modelsim
- Helmut Reinig of Infineon
Atrenta Spyglass.
- Dan Joyce of Hewlett-Packard
We have and use a mix of Atrenta SpyGlass (phasing it out) Cadence HAL,
Synopsys Leda, and 0-in CheckList for linting. For coverage we use
the Cadence NC-Sim built-in.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Built in Mentor ModelSim.
- Steven Snyder of ITT
Main linter: 0-in CheckList.
We also use built in linter in VCS, plus two different synthesizers
Synplicity and Cadence RTL compiler.
It seems no one linter catches all issues.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I rarely use a linter tool, but I have used Verilint in the past.
- Jeff Bray of Analog Devices
We use Verilint, which was part of Avanti, which is now Synopsys.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Spyglass for linting. We use built-in coverage in Synopsys VCS.
- Sam Bishai of Cisco
We used to have TransEDA, the license expired, I wanted to renew, but
they're gone (at least no-one ever answered my requests). We bought
Aldec RivieraPro because it has some linting capabilities
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
spyglass
- Jin Song Liu of Agere
We used to use Atrenta SpyGlass, but have had to switch to Cadence HAL.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Mentor DesignAnalyst and ModelSim
- Bruce Meyer of L-3 Communications
Cadence NC-SIM Built-In
Synopsys VCS Built-In, also have Leda (don't use it much yet)
Mentor ModelSim Built-In
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cadence NCsim + Synopsys Leda
- Nathan Nipper of Harris
Leda, some designers starting to use SpyGlass, some won't bother with
anything beyond built-in VCS.
- Joseph Staudt of Cisco
Moving from SpyGlass to Leda (cost reduction)
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Synopsys Leda and also built in linter in Mentor Modelsim.
- Kishor Mistry of Gennum
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