( DAC 04 Item 5 ) ---------------------------------------------- [ 02/09/05 ]
Subject: Mathworks MatLab & Simulink, Elanix Systemview, CoWare SPW
NOW I UNDERSTAND -- This is the first year in the DAC survey where I
expressly asked about Mathworks and Elanix. Suddenly now I understand
why Cadence pawned off SPW to CoWare! Matlab and Simulink are everywhere
and hardly anyone talked about SPW. Bad news for CoWare. D'oh!
We like using Matlab & Simulink. They are good tools to use.
- Robert Cram of Gennum Corp.
Matlab has been a constant staple for research work.
- Stanley Fok of Gennum Corporation
I'm evaluating Matlab and find it is a very interesting tool. Now
they need a link to NC-Sim and VCS instead of just Modelsim. I told
them that 80% of the simulator market is in NC-Sim and VCS.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Our DSP guys used Matlab/Simulink for software defined radio design
research oriented stuff. Nice idea, and DSP guys love Matlab but
usually don't trust the code it generates by hand and the really
experienced guys usually just throw away the generated code and do
it themselves by hand, especially if you want the performance. Maybe
this will improve over time. Matlab also seems useful for FPGA
signal processing circuit generation but I have never tried it.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Matlab as basic design tool. It is very useful to develop your
algorithms, but the linkage to simulators and synthesis is lousy -- so
any design must be transferred to RTL by hand.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I have used Simulink, but it is too high level for me as an R&D guy.
I use Matlab every day.
- David Magee of Texas Instruments
We are using Matlab extensively for our power management system design,
and are very happy with the tool right now.
- Weikai Sun of Volterra
Coware SPW and Synplify DSP are OK.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I am a keen Simulink user, haven't used as much of it lately as I
have been using CoWare SPW more recently. I have never used Elanix
Systemview, so unfortuantely cannot help you out there.
- Francis Swarts of Broadcom
CoWare SPW and Mathworks Simulink are very comparable if you're not
doing analog. Simulink has analog stuff that is maybe mandatory in
some IPs. Simulink + RealTime Workshop + C code optimizer is VERY
expensive versus competition.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I think Matlab and Simulink are good tools for system engineers to
carry out algorithm study. Elanix is more suitable for graphical
analog and mixed-signal modeling. SPW perhaps needs some time to
use and is not quite easy to maintain. AccelChip is good at
building a system prototype based upon IP libraries. It also has
some scheduling capability similar to Catapult C. However its
flexibity and efficiency is not as good as the Catapult C in terms
of the architecture scheduling.
- Yuanbin Guo of Nokia
We tried Elanix Systemview and it absolutely rocks! Never have I
seen software so intuitive, functional and easy to use. It replaces
classical pen & paper DSP system design with a nice graphical
environment for fine tuning system parameters and exploring various
archictectures. Their filter design toolbox is the best one I have
seen. Floating to fixed conversion is available and so is C code
generation and VHDL code generation (limited to few blocks). I also
want to mention that these guys are extremely nice to deal with. The
only sad part is that Elanix doesn't support Linux yet.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I do have extensive experience with Simulink. That is why I am their
advisory board. I am not gushy about the tool. It is just a tool.
I have had some exposure to SPW, and Systemview, too
Mathworks Simulink
- GUI is friendlier than others and very customizable.
- It interoperates with Matlab better than any other tool.
- It understands true analog simulation better than SPW/SystemView.
- It finally has decent integrated fixed point support.
- Path to implementation improving. Good for FPGA/Processor and
ModelSim but no clean path to Cadence tools.
- Runs well on Windows boxes and fully interoperates with Unix.
- Comm libraries are getting better (equalizers, timing recovery,
RF impairments and so on)
- The display scopes are a little quirky and you can not zoom in on
spectral plots!
- We use RTW for code generation to C so as to reuse Simulink for
functional verification using a bit-true flow. This works well
but limits our words size to a max of 32 bits.
- A good tool to co-simulate with Cadence would be good. This could
accelerate our development.
- The use of frames in Simulink as a means of accelerating simulations
sounds great on the surface but trying to do something like timing
recovery using frames is very confusing. Better stick to sample by
sample simulations; for simulation speed of such sims you must get
the Simulink accelerator.
- The Sim profiler is useful in understanding where the sim times go.
- The Simulink debugger is not easy to use. We stick to using scopes
and assertions.
- The new embedded Matlab option is great for stuff that you can code
procedurally in 5 minutes but would take an hour to code graphically.
CoWare SPW
- Great libraries though not necessarily bug free.
- Excellent path to implementation.
- Muchos dollars particularly if you add libraries.
- Great interoperability with Cadence tools.
- GUI is usable but not great.
- SPW used to be limited to Unix.
Elanix SystemView
- Interesting tool for system development: easy to use.
- Last time I looked at it it was not possible to build hierarchical
blocks. Perhaps they have fixed this but as a result you had to build
your entire system in one sheet.
- It was also hard to pass parameters.
- I found Systemview added delays to my blocks in some instances. I did
not like that; I would rather deal with error messages and have to solve
those uncertainties myself.
Every tool does have its issues. Hope this helps.
- Claudio Rey of IceFyre Semiconductor
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