( ESNUG 335 Item 10 ) --------------------------------------------- [11/3/99]
Subject: ( ESNUG 334 #1 ) Faster Verplex Also Does Transistor Comparisons
> Anon please. I like seeing letters promoting Verplex in ESNUG. They
> encourage Synopsys to improve Formality's capacity and speed, and for
> Avanti to do the same with Chrysalis.
>
> Verplex is winning yesterday's war by doing only RTL and gate-level
> comparisons. They don't discuss it, but Synopsys has transistor-level
> equivalence checking in Formality called Transit. It lets you compare
> your source RTL with your post-layout transistor netlists (in CDL
> format.)
>
> - [ Ground Control To Major Tom ]
From: [ Big Brother Is Watching ]
John,
Verplex already has an RTL-to-schematic (actually a SPICE netlist)
comparison plug-in called LTX. Their's is shipping, in use, and publicized.
I don't have a need for it, but the people I have talked with love it.
Guess that's why Synopsys is working on their version (as is Cadence in the
Affirma area). Again, anon.
- [ Big Brother Is Watching ]
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From: "Duncan Walker" <walker@cs.tamu.edu>
Hi, John,
The IBM Verity tool (see an old IBM Journal of R&D for a description) has
provided transistor-level equivalence checking for several years. If you
use a standard cell library, you don't need more than gate-level checking,
because it is trivial to extract from layout back to gates. End-to-end
checking is achieved by checking the cell implementations against their
logic description, which are usually small enough that brute force will do.
The main benefits of transistor-level checking are avoiding this separate
cell checking procedure in designs using custom cells, and permitting the
end-user to check whether their vendor's library is correct.
- Duncan Walker
Texas A&M University College Station, TX
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: Scott Evans <scott@sonicsinc.com>
I used to be a Verplex customer and the comparison to transistor-level was
something they had in their system early on. I don't know if they advertise
it or have abandoned it. We had plans to verify this capability but never
got around to it. We did use the gate to gate and RTL to gate capability
for several chips and had similar good experiences as expressed by [ Big
Brother ].
- Scott Evans
Sonics, Inc. Mountain View, CA
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
From: "Sean W. Smith" <sean_smith@mindspring.com>
John,
Verplex also makes an product called Tuxedo-LTX that goes to the transistor
level. Tuxedo LEC is the RTL to Gates. They realize that many people don't
need the transistor capability so they sell it as an add on rather than
force you to buy it. The bottom line at the moment is that they have
superior technology and the best equivalence checker on the market.
- Sean Smith
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