( DAC'17 Item 5 ) ------------------------------------------------- [11/17/17]
Subject: IC Manage & Cliosoft get #5 Best 2017; MethodICs & Dassault missing
INFRASTRUCTURE MADE THE TOP 5: As a chip designer I've made it no secret
over the years with both Dean Drako and Shiv Sikand (both of IC Manage)
how I never really respected unimportant "background" infrastructure SW
like design data management tools, etc. But with close to 2,700 words by
EDA users about DDM tools and their ilk, against my will I must put them in
the Top 5 of the Best of 2017 EDA tools survey results. [sad face]
To be specific, the exact user comment word counts were:
IC Manage: ############################# (16 users gave 1,471 words)
Cliosoft: ####################### (8 users gave 1,176 words)
DesignSync: . (1 user gave 4 words)
MethodICs: (0 users gave 0 words)
IC Manage got #1: For the ICM side, their GDP DDM, and Envision "big data"
analysis were the main thrust of the user comments. Dean and Shiv's plunge
into the EDA tool acceleration game with their PeerCache SW as the "next big
thing" -- got the rest of the ICM user comments.
Cliosoft got #2. For the Cliosoft side, their SOS7 DDM tool (new in 2016) got
some customer lip service -- but their Visual Diff got more enthusiasm.
Srinath's plunge into the IP reuse / IP management / design collaboration
game with his designHUB portal is the "next big thing" that Cliosoft is
pushing -- got the rest of the Clio user comments.
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OOPS: And the Rodney Dangerfield "I don't get no respect" double award
goes to both Dassault DesignSync and MethodICs VersIC for both getting
zero (0) positive user comments in this survey. (Sorry, but I don't count
the phrase "We migrated from DesignSync to Cliosoft" as a positive user
comment for DesignSync.)
"With my dog I don't get no respect. He keeps barking at the front door.
He don't want to go out. He wants me to leave."
- Rodney Dangerfield, American stand-up comedian (1921 - 2004)
"I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection.
My yo-yo, it never came back!"
- Rodney Dangerfield, American stand-up comedian (1921 - 2004)
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QUESTION ASKED:
Q: "What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific EDA tools
you've seen this year? WHY did they interest you?"
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IC MANAGE GDP
We've now used IC Manage GDP design management system for our production
tapeout for 15 years.
IC Manage's support is excellent; they have been more responsive to our
requests for fixes and improvements than other software vendors of the
same size or larger.
We hear back immediately and they try to resolve thing quickly -- they
are usually able to incorporate our enhancement requests within 1-2
builds.
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IC Manage GDP and Envision big data analytics.
My company currently uses both IC Manage GDP data management and IC
Manage Envision big data predictive analytics.
GDP's best features were:
- Speed
- Capacity
- Versioning the data, while building good security and
permissions
I talked to IC Manage at DAC about how their GDP design management tool
might also help our physical design team - we plan to take a closer
look.
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IC Manage GDP Design & IP Management
We were one of IC Manage's first GDP customers. We still use it for
design and IP management today.
IP Reuse --
IC Manage had IP reuse built into its DM system from the beginning, and
we use it heavily.
Our design teams are small, so we have to be smart with use of resources
on our projects. This level of reuse is a big factor in our team's
efficiency.
Some examples of our IP reuse:
- GDP: we integrate mixed IP data and test benches into our projects.
For example, Virtuoso layout, schematics, RTL, timing and
testbenches for verification.
- Formal verification testbenches: SystemVerilog and SystemC test
benches are managed within ICM and stay with the IP when used in
projects.
- 3D sensor IP: A 3D sensor is stacked on a mixed signal chip; the
circuitry that is used to process sensor data is an example of
managed IP re-used in GDP
- Embedded controllers: We use an embedded controller across
different products, and projects which is also reusable IP.
- Libraries: Of course, our std cell lib is IP to us. We don't
want to redesign these libraries.
Our IP reuse efficiency is much better with GDP -- that is probably our
biggest benefit.
Additionally, GDP scales with our project data growth. It's IP reuse
mechanism doesn't duplicate data across sites and intra-site.
Multi-Site Data Transfer Speed --
Our chip projects are 20-30GB in size for a relatively small team. GDP
lets us rapidly pull data from ICM's proxy servers vs. the long latency
internet from the master ICM server. That is crucial for how we
do multi-site data management
I have even used IC Manage for real work on a VPN and GDP using my
laptop on a flight with WiFi! Sometimes you just have to get things
done.
Support --
IC Manage's support continues to be great, even as the company has
grown. They have an efficient bug reporting system, and either a
workaround or a bug fix within a few days.
And I can still call Shiv directly if needed.
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IC Manage GDP
We've been using the IC Manage GDP design data management system for
10 years.
They are excellent in DM, and their support is fast, with solid
technical support providing workable fixes.
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We use IC Manage GDP for our design data management.
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IC Manage GDP -- we use it in our production environment.
We depend on it.
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IC Manage GDP
My company mixes both Cadence Virtuoso plus our source environment
along with IC Manage GDP for design management.
We are in the process of evaluating GDP for our own group. Our top
reasons are:
1) It's ease of use, and
2) GDP supports both digital and analog
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IC Manage GDP is being used by another team within my company for
specific SoC cores.
The team has good things to say about it -- IC Manage addresses problems
with large data sets and latency issues accessing data from other sites.
(We don't use it in our corporate R&D group, as we don't really deal
with large data sets.)
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IC Manage GDP
GDP is a high-performance design & IP management system for single &
multi-site designs.
I used DAC to search for EDA tools that would help to enhance/improve
our design environment. For benchmarking, IC Manage specifies a machine
to host the GDP servers to ensure optimal performance in terms of speed
and servers reliability. IC Manage will provide the machine if you
don't have one. If a DM competitor does not have a server host machine
that is on par, it would be a challenge for us to make a direct
comparison.
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IC MANAGE PEERCACHE
PeerCache is an interesting concept -- it has the potential to remove
bottlenecks on network attached storage servers.
- Instead of relying on a central storage server, PeerCache
distributes your storage across several servers in your
compute farm.
- It's a great solution for workspaces/scratch/temporary storage,
where you do not need snapshots.
To use PeerCache, you must have fast storage for each server that will
be a node in the PeerCache cluster, however the cost of the storage is
offset because you will need to purchase less storage for the NAS
server, which usually has higher costs per GB.
If the tool is adapted by semiconductor companies, it may be a threat to
NAS vendors such as NetApp and EMC.
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IC Manage PeerCache EDA Tool Accelerator
We tested IC Manage PeerCache on a mixed signal SoC that included
Cadence Virtuoso layout, Innovus for place and route, Tempus for timing,
and Voltus for IR drop data. (We have not yet migrated to a production
environment.)
Based on our initial testing, PeerCache was much faster (>50X) for us to
populate projects. You aren't actually moving the data.
PeerCache also optimizes disk storage hardware on your client-side, as
it only populates when you do edit data only.
For released IP/PDK/Libs this is a perfect use case for PeerCache.
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IC Manage PeerCache
Shiv's peer-sharing SW for EDA tool speedup that my company might use.
Based on the DAC demo I saw, you install PeerCache and your EDA tools
'auto-magically' work faster.
In reality, PeerCache speeds up the underlying network system. At a
high level, this how it works:
- Your local computers have cache that is already available.
- PeerCache takes the cache cluster creates a tight network to
share it via high bandwidth to speed up your data exchange
and thus your tools.
- You then use your low bandwidth for network storage.
I work for a large company, and we will go through our IT group to get
PeerCache. A smaller company that doesn't have a separate IT group,
could easily just install the software.
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IC Manage PeerCache
I'm excited to see an EDA vendor tackling the real infrastructure issues
with NFS bottleneck.
We are using NFS to enable jobs in our server farm -- our NFS has been
the bottleneck during our tapeout process, especially with the increase
in processing power and network interface speed.
I spent a decent amount of time with IC Manage in the demo and
discussion with the implementation details.
PeerCache is a great concept and the architecture seems reasonable. I'm
looking forwarding to the tools to get some soak time in real life scale
-- at least hundreds of machine nodes -- with robust data integrity.
Then we will for sure consider them.
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IC Manage PeerCache
We've heard great reviews on IC Manage PeerCache.
It has the potential to speed up our engineer's access to data much,
much faster.
We have begun working with IC Manage to use it with our environment,
though we are not yet using it in production capacity.
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IC Manage PeerCache
Every year IC Manage announces interesting new products at DAC. One
year it was their Envision big data analytics.
This year, we discussed PeerCache EDA Tool Accelerator at DAC with them.
We've already followed up after DAC to learn more about it.
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I saw an IC Manage PeerCache demo at DAC.
The technology was impressive and we were interested enough to take a
closer look, though turns out that we have a high-performance system
that doesn't suffer from the problems it solves.
Regardless, IC Manage is onto something there that makes a lot of sense.
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CLIOSOFT SOS7
We have been using ClioSoft SOS for the past 5 years for design data
management at my company. We migrated from DesignSync to ClioSoft
SOS due to better features, performance, and support at that time.
SOS is deployed across all our design locations in China, India, and
San Jose for both analog and digital designs. What we like:
- tightly integrated with the Cadence Library Manager for
custom digital/analog designs
- handles ADE-XL cell views efficiently
- links-to-cache helps us with network disk space usage per user
- remote site caching gives virtually primary site like performance
We also use SOSweb to manage project related documentation files like
docs, pdfs and xls sheets.
This year we saw SOS7 at DAC and liked its capabilities. We have
recently completed the evaluation of SOS7 and have started to migrate
to SOS7 which provides better performance. We had some initial setup
issues but we have made quick progress and are deploying it on our
projects.
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SOS7. It works. Cheaper than ICM.
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CLIOSOFT VISUAL DIFF
Cliosoft Visual Design Diff
I am currently using it at my current startup where it has become a
"must have" tool. It's benefits outweigh the $$$.
With Design Diff, we quickly spot the changes both on Cadence
schematics and layouts. It tells designers if objects are added,
deleted or modified. It even tells them of any property/parameter
changes and what the new value was set to. It helps layout
tremendously as they do not have to do a forensic investigation
to find out how the schematic was modified. Our layout engineers
are also able to quickly determine layout changes without running
XOR. Of course it is not a replacement for XOR but it help us
identify quickly what changes were done on an ongoing basis.
I think it is one of the best tools of its kind in the market.
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Our analog design teams especially like the Cliosoft VDD tools to
quickly find out the incremental changes.
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We're big fans of the Cliosoft Visual Diff. It saves us considerable
headaches.
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CLIOSOFT DESIGNHUB
Cliosoft designHUB
Here are my DAC notes for it.
ClioSoft's latest product designHUB provides a creative take on design
collaboration and merges key elements of IP reuse, project collaboration
along with a new concept of crowd sourcing. Here is why I liked it.
To begin, it is independent of any design management system. DesignHUB
works on top of SOS, Git, Perforce, Subversion, or any network storage.
IP REUSE
Their approach lets companies to better use 3rd party and internally
created IPs within the different locations/organizations of the company.
Cliosoft has extended the definition of IP to include semiconductor IP,
documents, presentations, methodologies, Scripts etc.
Has customizable workflows to authorize IP uploads and downloads.
Keeps track of third party IP licensing.
Tracks IP use in different SoCs/IP sub-systems and projects
Covers all phases of IP use -
Find - Easy browsing of IPs and ability to compare them
Integrate - Infrastructure to have discussions with the
development team for quickly resolving of issues found
during IP integration,
Publish - Easy publishing of IP
The IP repository keeps track of all the metadata of the IP including
different revisions used for different projects and issues associated
with each version of the IP.
Seems very easy to use and the GUI looks very intuitive.
PROJECT DASHBOARD
Easy to use dashboard for the designer and projects alike.
Design teams to be in sync with all docs and project developments.
Captures discussions and tracks issues and resolutions.
Enables design leads to broadcast important notifications.
Better way to manage different parts of the project.
CROWD SOURCING
This is a new concept which ClioSoft has introduced into designHUB.
It lets designers form groups to collaborate and discuss different
topics of interest regarding the IP. It works especially well for
geographically dispersed design teams.
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I visited ClioSoft's DAC booth to see what's new as we have used
ClioSoft products for over 12 years. I am always interested in
seeing what new products they are working on. This year I was able
to demo their DesignHub product as well as SOS7.
What I like about DesignHUB is that it's an environment which design
teams can use to manage their internal and 3rd party IPs easily. It
appears to have the hooks needed for the necessary authorizations
for downloading and uploading an IP.
I think it will be helpful for engineering to shortlist the IPs they
like, compare them, review their quality and then download them into
their workspaces once the IP is approved for download.
What is interesting is that Designhub allows anything reusable in
your company (SIPs, scripts, flows, PDKs etc.) to be defined as an
"IP" and tracks the usage of all the IP subsystems and projects using
that "IP".
They create a knowledge-base around each IP from the discussions on
the IP so that designers can benefit from it and query as needed.
What I liked most is DesignHub provides a project dashboard for
design teams to collaborate and be in sync. Its project dashboard
looks easy to setup and engineers can have discussions with fellow
team members in it. The dashboard collates all info from different
SW such as issue tracking systems, and different data management
systems -- and puts it all together on the dashboard.
It is an out of the box approach and Cliosoft seems to have done a
good job in implementing Designhub. It looks flexible and seems like
it'll be easy to use.
We have been users of Cliosoft SOS for a long time and are very happy
with their support. I expect Designhub to have the same backing.
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Just last month, I meet with Srinath from Cliosoft and his technical
team to discuss their DesignHUB EDA tool for IP management.
I was impressed by the tools fundamental philosophy to let the users
to define & customize their own IP management methodology, rather than
a fixed template based IP cataloging tool. This is a key difference,
as it simply fits into any chip design companies or IP design house.
For example, we have many internal custom IPs and external 3rd party
IPs, that must be managed differently for many different reasons.
With this approach, designHUB is clearly has all the bells and whistles
to support this mix & match of IP use.
I also liked that it interfaces seamlessly with their SOS tool, where
all our IP design history and status can be automatically be read into
DesignHUB for IP management and version control. (It would have been
a major mess-up if DesignHUB didn't do this.)
We plan to complete the DesignHUB evaluation in the next few months and
if it checks out, we'll begin advertising our internal IP catalog to our
chip design groups within the company with it.
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