( DAC 04 Item 15 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 02/09/05 ]
Subject: Cadence NanoRoute and Silicon Ensemble; Synopsys Astro and PhysOpt
ENOUGH HATE TO GO AROUND -- Cadence marketeers hate that many of their
First Encounter customers are Synopsys Astro/PhysOpt users. "Damn it!
Can't they use our NanoRoute or even our old Silicon Ensemble instead!"
Conversely, the Synopsys marketeers hate that many of their Astro/PhysOpt
customers use Cadence First Encounter. "Damn it! Can't they use our
Jupiter-XT instead!" (Life is cruel to the EDA market weasils sometimes.)
No, we don't use it, but "NanoRoute" is a cool name.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
So far NanoRoute is sufficient and it is quick. One minor problem is
is with ECOs. Sometimes it rips up and routes too many wires.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
For the P&R tools: SE and Apollo are pretty much dead. Astro and
Cadence FE is pretty much equivalent overall, with Astro winning out
on performance and QoR, and Cadence winning on ease-of-use and
time-to-set-up. (NanoRoute would be just the router component,
and seems misplaced here).
Magma is a neat tool, but has problems with some complicated (not the
same as large) designs.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Astro and NanoRoute I use, especially NanoRoute coz of supporting Tcl.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Cadence Silicon Ensemble vs Cadence Nanoroute: Nanoroute is much faster
and easier to use but we have found it necessary on occasions to turn
to Silicon Ensemble for ECO fixes and GDS generation, etc., especially
for 180nm designs. Silicon Ensemble is slow and hard to use, but it is
still a rock-solid, sign-off quality tool for us.
- Mani Gopalakrishnan of Fujitsu
We're using PhysOpt, and we have been doing so for several years.
Corporate likes a single-tool strategy, but the rumblings are that
we'll be moving to Cadence at some point in the future. PhysOpt
does a decent job, though I don't have results from any comparisons.
First Encounter is our floorplanner and front end for routing.
Again, corporate wants a single-tool solution for every project,
so we are not in much of a position to make changes.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We looked into First Encounter and Synopsys PhysOpt. FE was stronger
on the floorplanning side and PhysOpt stronger on the synthesis end.
However we decided that in the current market we could not justify the
high costs involved in using these tools. Our intention is to try to
off load as much of this work to the ASIC vendors.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I like PhysOpt and Encounter
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I use Cadence PKS for small chip synthesis. It's great. I also use
PKS some feature as our utility. I use Encounter for floorplan and
IPO. Great tool. I use SE/Encounter/PKS for backend design flow.
Silicon Ensemble is a most stable tool. We use it for long time.
Virtuoso is also good enough.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We are satsified with Synopsys PhysOpt.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Magma and Synopsys both have strong offerings, though I think Synopsys
should drop PhysOpt as a separate product and stick with Astro as the
physical platform. Cadence seems rather cobbled together.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
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