( ESNUG 561 Item 5 ) -------------------------------------------- [06/01/16]
Subject: 246 engineers on today's SPICE use vs. their future SPICE use
From: [ Amit Gupta of Solido Design ]
Hi, John,
Below is where 246 engineers told us what SPICE vendor tools they use now,
vs. their perception of the SPICE simulator technology leaders.
WHAT SPICE USERS ARE USING in 2016 vs 2015
Here are the relative vendor use proportions. This sometimes differs from
SPICE market share numbers because market share is based on annual dollar
amounts of SPICE licenses sold. The data here is on what the SPICE users
are actually using now; not on the dollars they spent on SPICE that year.
All of Mentor's numbers include Eldo, BDA AFS, and Tanner T-Spice.
First, for the actual SPICE use data, we asked the identical question for
2016 as 2015, and compared them. If you recall from our 2015 findings, it's
quite common (~60%) for design groups to use SPICE simulators from at least
TWO different SPICE vendors.
First off, notice how repeatable this data is!
Cadence remains the #1 simulator vendor in terms of usage, with Synopsys #2
and Mentor #3. While the rest of the SPICE simulator customer use numbers
stayed flat, there was an unexpected 7% drop in Mentor's overall SPICE
customer usage data. This surprised me, but looking at SPICE leadership
perception data subsections, MENT had a corresponding 6% drop in memory
SPICE leadership, too.
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PERCEPTIONS TURN INTO REALTTY
The rest of this link are results of what a 3rd party outside consultant
found as the technology leaders in the subsections of the SPICE market.
I actually paid for this information. Why? Not because it's a fun exercise
to keep marketing people busy. It's because the hard proportional data on
exactly who the perceived technology leaders are now, directly translates
into the proportional sales in 12 months. If this data is collected without
hidden bias, it's amazingly repeatable and accurate.
The EDA perceptions of now grow into the EDA sales of 12 months from now.
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AMS, CUSTOM DIGITAL, RF DESIGN
Cadence is still perceived as the technology leader for analog/mixed-signal,
custom digital and RF design, with 62% citing them as the technology leader -
very close to last year.
This matches the fact that Cadence Virtuoso and ADE has close to 80% market
share in the full custom and AMS design/layout tool markets.
WHAT CHANGED: See how Mentor grew 7% while Cadence + Synopsys shrank by a
total of 9%? That's Wally stealing market share from Lip-Bu and Aart in
the AMS/custom/RF SPICE market.
This is due to Ravi successfully growing BDA AFS inside the Mentor sales
channel and gaining increased awareness for its technology differentiation.
Keep in mind this is a perception survey; with this 2X MENT perception bump,
I expect to see this impact MENT sales in AMS/custom/RF over the next year.
With only 16%, SNPS Avanti HSPICE and SNPS Magma FineSim SPICE simulators
don't do well in the AMS/custom/RF niche.
Agilent (Keysight) held its 6%. That Silvaco bump to 2% is Iliya taking
scraps from Lip-Bu and Aart, but 2% is negligible.
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MEMORY DESIGN
Because memory cells are highly repetitive, their SPICE simulations can use
this to get far better speed/accuracy/capacity than general SPICE tools.
The other thing is memory designers are very fickle, always picking the best
SPICE simulator for the process node they're on -- which is why memory SPICE
is the one to win. If you win memory, sales in other niches readily follow.
"SPICE is interesting in that you enter through memory; it's the
most unforgiving market there is. Zero tolerance. You gotta
have the best tool or they toss your tool out. Memory designers
have no loyalty to any SPICE vendor. This why Synopsys has
9 different SPICE simulators."
- Gary Smith during the DAC'14 Troublemakers Panel
With dominant 45%, this shows the SNPS Avanti HSPICE, Magma FineSim, and
CustomSim SPICE simulators do really well in the memory SPICE niche.
The other takeaway from this data is that Synopsys and Cadence are both
gaining in the memory SPICE space -- but notice that Cadence has grown
more. This is because their Altos memory characterization and their
Spectre XPS memory tools are getting traction.
THIS WAS A BIG CHANGE: The fact that CDNS Spectre XPS benchmarked well
against SNPS HSPICE at 16FF in ESNUG 547 #3 shows how successful CDNS now
is in memory design. This is new! Prior to these two major CDNS actions,
Lip-Bu's share of memory SPICE leadership was non-existent.
Aart does well in memory SPICE because he acquired 6 different SPICE flavors
to offer memory designers. Magma FineSim does well, Aart buys it, and then
he keeps those FineSim users happy after the acquisition. Same with Avanti
and Nassda. But notice that SNPS only has 45% compared to CDNS 36% -- a
shrinking lead there.
In addition, Mentor's memory SPICE technology leadership perception dropped
6 points to 11%.
This overall data suggests Cadence's Spectre XPS simulator for memory design
is doing well, whereas Mentor's AFS Mega memory simulator is not getting
user traction. It also backs that Cadence Liberate is also being used more
for memory characterization, whereas Mentor lacking a competitive solution
further explains these results.
Silvaco had the biggest relative drop, going from #4 in 2015 to last place
in 2016, with only 1%. Iliya's announced increase in SPICE R&D investment
so far is not paying off.
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STD CELL DESIGN
The std cell leadership perceptions are very similar year over year. But
I'm going to say this shows Cadence is catching up to Synopsys in SPICE
leadership for std cell design, even though Synopsys lost 2 points and
Cadence gained 2 points.
The reason why is that before Lip-Bu had acquired Altos Liberate in 2011,
CDNS was a virtual non-player in the std cell SPICE market. This CDNS
library characterization tool gives them momentum in std cell SPICE. For
Lip-Bu to go from ~2% to 41% in just 5 years is impressive.
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THE SPICE WARS ARE STILL IN FLUX
It was interesting to see that a large proportion of respondents selected
"other" or "don't know" for the SPICE technology leaders.
This suggests that there's continued opportunity for commercial vendors to
earn SPICE market share growth, in particular for memory design, and to some
degree standard cell and AMS/custom/RF design. It's still in flux.
- Amit Gupta
Solido DA San Jose, CA
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Related Articles:
246 engineers surveyed on general SPICE use & SPICE requirements
246 engineers on today's SPICE use vs. their future SPICE use
And the variation part of Amit's 246 engineer SPICE survey...
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