( ESNUG 514 Item 6 ) -------------------------------------------- [11/16/12]
Subject: Our Dassault DesignSync V6 nightmare and the IC Manage GDP fix
> I know you like real life transition stories, so I thought I'd share ours
> going from Dassault DesignSync to IC Manage GDP. It took 3 days to
> convert our design data for two in-process designs from the DesignSync
> form into IC Manage form. Below is our step-by-step process for
> converting the data.
>
> - from http://www.deepchip.com/items/0484-10.html
From: [ Burn Me Twice ]
Hi, John,
Please keep me anon for fear of recriminations.
For many years we used Dassault DesignSync V5. Then we tried to upgrade
to DesignSync V6. After having so many problems with V6, we finally had
to switch over to IC Manage GDP for design data management and rev control.
Our company builds complex SoCs. I manage our analog/RF design team; we
have about 30 in-house analog libraries. One analog/RF macro alone that
my company makes has close to 1M transistors. That's a lot of DDM!
In our experience DesignSync (DS) is a very complicated tool. It can
support a large number of engineers, but it requires constant babysitting.
Our CAD engineer would spend 20-30% of his time taking care of DS. We
finally switched from Dassault DesignSync to IC Manage GDP due to the
combination of technical problems with DesignSync V6 and Dassault's lack
of customer support. It's like they lost their focus after all the
acquisitions. Dassault only had 1 FAE supporting DesignSync in California.
Their AE was good on the phone, and would promise things like scripts, but
then wouldn't follow through to actually solve our problems.
MOVING FROM DESIGNSYNC V5 TO DESIGNSYNC V6:
DesignSync V5 was slow. DesignSync V6 was supposed to speed up things using
a "manifest" to help the server keep track of local changes. So we did a
major transition, both to using Open Access and to DesignSync V6.
Unfortunately V6 didn't fix problems, instead it got worse.
I wished I had the prior DS version back! DS V5 was slow, but at least it
was robust and reliable. It took us 2-3 months to get over the migration
hump of converting from our old database and resolving all the DS V6 issues.
Even then, there was still always something that didn't work in V6.
These design management tools should be rock solid. But with DesignSync,
our designers would actually end up avoiding checking in and out very often.
That was a problem for us.
It didn't take much with Linux permissions to bring DS off-balance. When
we updated/populated a workspace with DS V6, we would have to just stop and
wait. We would see no activity nor feedback and wouldn't know for a few
minutes if it even populated properly. Even checking in one cell was like
the Twilight Zone. V6 was very unpredictable -- sometimes it would work and
continue to the next cell. Sometimes it would stop.
Also, after following Dassault's hardware instructions to the letter, two
years later, they told us we needed new hardware.
DesignSync V6 is a dangerous tool. For example, the workspace we used for
tapeout got corrupted just before the final checks we run prior to sending
the GDSII to foundry. It took us one full day to recover data and the
tapeout got delayed accordingly.
Ironically, one of the perverse effects of the DS V6 "manifest" was that if
one module is corrupted, the populate step seemed to freeze and it wouldn't
do anything.
Debugging these problems were tough. We tried, Dassault tried, Cadence's
audit team tried, and we even looked at the hardware configuration. No one
could find the problem.
After we taped out that chip using DesignSync V6, and our next project was
starting, Dassault promised yet another version to fix all the prior
problems, but we weren't willing to go through that pain all over again.
OUR INITIAL IC MANAGE GDP EVAL:
We started our IC Manage evaluation in the Spring of 2012. One of their
strengths was that their local AE brought over a server configured with
their DDM tool already installed. He just plugged it in. We were running
the eval in just a few hours.
It was a night and day difference between GDP and DesignSync. We didn't
need to do a formal benchmark comparison. IC Manage GDP just worked.
Since IC Manage uses Perforce, there is no meta data on the client side; it
is all in a vault on the server side. No meta data on the client side means
you can't mess up the server by accidentally deleting, modifying or copying
workspaces. That's a strength because the server knows what you have in
your workspace. It doesn't waste time.
In contrast, DesignSync creates a link to a cache and adds metadata to your
directory. The problem is that if something happens to the meta data,
i.e. problems with read write permissions, or something gets lost, then the
server is stuck.
When we use IC Manage GDP to check out a design lib/directory in Cadence,
it takes 10-30 seconds tops. On average, DesignSync's check in took 5x-10x
longer - assuming that it worked.
The first week of our IC Manage GDP eval went so smoothly that after a week
of using it, we decided to try it on a production design.
MOVING FROM DESIGNSYNC V6 TO IC MANAGE:
It only took us 3 days to change to IC Manage GDP 22330 from our existing
project in DesignSync. We just extracted the DesignSync database, checked
it into IC Manage's database, set up the workspaces, and were ready to go.
(If this was a new design, you would get the box and be ready to go
the same day.)
After another week on in our production design, we knew GDP would work. We
purchased it soon thereafter.
Other comments:
- I like that IC Manage uses Perforce instead of their own
proprietary stuff for their repository. Perforce is a widely
used industry standard; so they have a lot of engineers using it
and working on it.
- GDP also has atomic check-in, where it checks in everything or
nothing. DesignSync was supposed to have it, but it would get
hung up. It was a nightmare.
- IC Manage has a good integration with Virtuoso; something I expect
from a commercial tool. What I like is that you push a button on
the GUI for check-in, check-out and don't need commands. If you
are working on a cell, you can check the revision history and
revert to a previous version if needed.
- EDA design tools don't inherently think about revision control,
and they should. This needs to change; the Holy grail is all EDA
tools have embedded revision control interfaces. For example, we
use Helic, an EM extraction tool from Greece. When we tried to
check in a cell, Helic changes the Read/Write to Read only. IC
Manage expected cells to be R/W. Fortunately you can go to the
command line to make it work. IC Manage's has intuitive, simple
commands. DS had such long commands that it was easy to make
errors in the commands.
- What is unique about IC Manage's business model is we could buy
the software alone, or buy the software and hardware together.
We bought the HW/SW combination, to make it turnkey for us. Even
if you didn't know about CAD, you could work with it.
GDP is solid, robust, easy to set up and use. IC Manage's support is
great. We have only had minor configuration issues; for example when our
designer forgot to lock a shared workspace. Our local ICM AE got back
to us and resolved it the same day (i.e. fixed the permissions and set the
default to "lock".) We don't have manpower to spare, so we appreciate
getting that level of support.
DesignSync used to be good, but it has degraded over time. A tool can
theoretically have some great features, but if it is malfunctioning,
I don't care.
IC Manage just works and it works well.
- [ Burn Me Twice ]
Join
Index
Next->Item
|
|
