( ESNUG 588 Item 22 ) --------------------------------------------- [10/16/20]
Subject: Costello on his Metrics cloud 4 hours vs. SNPS/CDNS/MENT's 5 days
Virtual DAC'20 Troublemakers Panel
Cooley: Joe. Costello. I saw Metrics put out a press release recently.
Codasip was using your cloud Verilog simulator with their RISC-V
embedded processor IP.
But the weird part, Mr. Costello, was this press release had no
data in it.
Is that because you have no real hard data to back your product?
Costello: [Laughs.] No, not at all, but I'm glad you pointed out a couple
of things. Like, in last year's panel (ESNUG 588 #9), Naveed and
I were talking about this wave that's going on in the RISC-V
community.
Codasip is one example of it and their partnership with Western
Digital. And everybody whose putting out -- and it doesn't
matter if it's ARM or RISC-V -- you know everybody whose putting
out some kind of processor IP runs into the problem that you've
got to have a design kit -- and you've got to offer some kind of
tool set to your customer to help out.
And so Codasip was working on that. Metrics came to them and
showed them what they could do with a cloud-based version of
that [a design kit] and that got them totally excited.
Now, they did ask us to test and say "well how does it work? How
well is it going to work?"
As an example, we didn't put it in our initial press release, but
their regression tests they were running on their [SNPS/CDNS/MENT]
design kit was somewhere between 4 and 5 days. That is what it
took Codasip to run it.
Cooley: With a prior tool or not?
Costello: With existing [SNPS/CDNS/MENT] tools. And by the way Codasip is
friends with everybody. They use everybody's tools.
Cooley: So, *whose* existing Verilog simulation tool?
Costello: I will say they use more than one vendor so I'm not going to
pick anybody out -- any particular person -- Codasip uses more than
one Verilog simulator.
They were running [SNPS/CDNS/MENT] in 4 to 5 days. Metrics
did it in 4 hours.
Not because Metrics has a faster Verilog simulator, but because
the cloud access allowed users like Codasip to flex and put as
many servers as they wanted on the job and can get it done
really quickly.
And for them, Codasip, that's radical. They were able to run
that regression test in 4 hours.
It completely changes their model of how customers do things.
Customers don't have to go, "okay, when are we going to run it?"
and then sit and wait for basically a work week?
Customers can do it -- not even overnight -- customers can do
it during a single workday.
Cooley: So, you're saying 2-runs-in-a-day versus 5-days-for-one-run.
Costello: Yeah, exactly. And that's huge. And by the way that's the
pattern that we at Metrics see with a lot of customers - that's
the thing that gets customers going in cloud-based Verilog
simulation to begin with. It's typically that exact problem.
Customers have a regression that's taking them too long, or it's
taking them a long time -- and customers don't think they can do
anything about it. The only thing you can do about it is to buy
more servers and buy more licenses in the current model.
And Metrics comes along saying "look we can solve that problem."
We have another customer who's doing a bigger processor design
than this. They had 1,000 servers they were typically using.
We said, "let's go to the cloud". And we [Metrics] have them
now running with 6,000 servers -- and the customer wants to go
to 12,000 servers, so that they can really compress the time
when they do these regressions.
So that's the typical pattern of how we at Metrics get into the
customer today is exactly that problem. They have a regression.
And by the way they [the customer] have chunked it and they've
broken the regression up in various ways -- and still that's
what it takes to get it through with their combination of
constraints on licenses and the data center.
And we at Metrics come along and say: "Unshackle yourself!
Go unlimited! Get the thing done quickly so you can move
on with life!"
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