( ESNUG 324 Item 1 ) ---------------------------------------------- [8/04/99]
Subject: Avanti's Apollo P&R Licensing Chows Tokens Like Popcorn At A Movie
> "Avanti is 'actively' encouraging users to move to Nova-RTL by
> implementing a high maintenance fee and a 23-minute lockout license
> scheme that prevents users from accessing another license for 23 minutes
> after one use. I told Avanti in no uncertain terms that this did not
> sit well with me and I would actively search for another solution."
>
> - An Anon Engineer ( from the DAC'99 Trip Report )
From: [ The Man In The Iron Mask ]
Hey John,
Please keep me anonymous on this one.
Recently there were some disgruntled Avanti customers complaining about
Avanti licensing procedures in ESNUG. I just thought I'd add to this
discussion by letting everyone know this creative licensing isn't just
reserved for their HDL RTL tools.
In the Avanti P&R system you can add numerous options. These include HPO
(high performance option), power analysis (Mars Rail), physical opto
(Saturn), cross-talk (Mars Xtalk), and timing driven. They utilize the
flexlm licensing so each of these options have a unique set of tokens
associated with each of them.
The problem is how Apollo checks these option tokens out.
We would expect that when a function from Apollo needs additional options
that it would check them out, then return the token when finished.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. When Apollo starts it grabs
everything it can find. So even though you may only be using base Apollo
capabilities you have 5 extra, expensive tokens checked out.
A common license configuration would be to have 5 Apollo licenses, but only
3 licenses for one of the options. With the way Apollo check out licenses,
the last two Apollo users can't access any of the options if they need to
because they have already been checked out by the first three users whether
they are using them or not. Avanti markets the options for just a
configuration saying you may only need 1 HPO to every two Apollo tokens.
They don't add that the first user will always get the HPO.
There is the capability in Apollo to release keys that have been checked
out. So a savvy customer can, in effect, manage their own licenses. Some
of this can be automated in the scheme interface, BUT this precludes the
use of many of the pull down menu's.
- [ The Man In The Iron Mask ]
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