( SNUG 04 Item 12 ) ---------------------------------------------- [08/11/04]
Subject: Mentor Calibre, Avanti Hercules, Cadence Assura
SOMETHING AIN'T RIGHT: As far as dollars are concerned, the DRC/LVS market
is still a three way race. That is, no one tool dominates this niche.
Dataquest FY 2002 DRC/LVS Market (in $ Millions)
Mentor Calibre #################################### $54.5 (42%)
Cadence Assura ############################# $44.1 (34%)
Synopsys Hercules #################### $29.8 (23%)
others # $1.3 (1%)
But when you talk to the actual end-users of DRC/LVS tools, they're either
neutral or strongly in favor of Mentor Calibre. Something ain't right here.
The dollars aren't matching what the users are saying.
7.) Avanti Hercules, Mentor Calibre, Cadence Diva/Dracula/Assura: who is
ahead and who is behind? Which DRC/LVS do you use on your chips?
Calibre is the superior physical verification tool by a large margin.
It's "Hercules done right". Hercules was good in it's day, but it has
been completely outclassed for 4 or 5 years. Dracula was also
exceptional in its day, but it was outclassed by ISS/Vericheck
(i.e. Hercules) and is now well past its prime. Diva isn't a contender
for chip level LVS/DRC.
Assura was declared the 'official' phys verification tool at Motorola
back in about 2000 or so (maybe it was early 2001) due largely to
Cadence's vast marketing muscle along with a vocal minority of mostly
analog designers within Moto. They liked Assura's flexibility such as
in allowing the creation of custom device definitions. For more than
3 years Motorola burned resources attempting to help Cadence work
through all the issues with Assura, but Assura wasn't able to catch
up... or even keep from losing ground. Finally Moto has 'officially'
switched back to Calibre.
It's incredible that it took several years for technical superiority to
overcome the momentum of the Cadence marketing machine.
- Jonathan Ellis of Freescale
Hercules:
I have been using Calibre since the early 1990s when it was the built-in
DRC/LVS tool in Mentor IC Station. It's great!
It's nowhere as easy to debug LVS errors in Hercules as it is with
Calibre. What's the deal with all the different report files? Calibre
has only one, and it's much easier to understand. The Hercules Explorer
DRC/LVS debugging interface is also nowhere as nice as Calibre. I hate
it. I haven't had any opportunity to run Calibre and Hercules on the
same data, but my impression is Hercules is not as fast.
Bottom line is, Hercules works OK, I guess, but why bother when you can
just get Calibre?
- Robert Maxwell of Mediaworks-ISI
We use Calibre DRC/LVS.
- Joe Dao of Aeluros, Inc.
Hercules - best debugging
Calibre- faster runtime
Assura - best GUI
Using Calibre
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Mentor Calibre is ahead. This is our only DRC/LVS tool since 0.18 um.
- Jean-Paul Morin of STMicroelectronics
We use Hercules and Calibre. Both are very capable, except Hercules'
netlist format is a bit cumbersome -- we are spoiled by SPICE.
- Haiming Jin of Intel
Used tham all. Now using Dracula, AGAIN. Ugh. All of the tools
mentioned work. Calibre is the best. Hercules second.
- Lynn Hall of Medtronics
We have used all three to my knowledge. I don't know who is ahead
though.
- Andrew Bell of PMC-Sierra, Inc.
We believe Calibre is ahead, it is more easy to use and well integrated
in Cadence tools, while Hercules is not "very well" integrated in the
Cadence environment and it is more difficult to setup. In our chips we
usually use Calibre.
- Marco Oliveira of Chipidea Microelectronica
Mentor Calibre is the leader for sure. The reason is its wide
popularity, excellent foundry support etc. But Hercules is a good tool,
and that is what we used for taping out our chips in the early time of
130 nm process.
It was rather painful to develop a good Hercules DRC/LVS runsets, since
our fab supported it on as a secondary compared to golden sign off
Calibre. Overall, I am happy with the results, both the chips I
verified with Hercules came out without any problems. Anyone who
doesn't have enough resources to have a thorough look at the runsets,
I would recommend to go and get Calibre by paying more.
- Santhosh Pillai of Parama Networks
For analog DRC/LVS, it depends on how well written the decks are etc...
but Assura seems to be twice as fast on small blocks and 20% faster
than Calibre at the chip level. (Both running in hierarchical modes.)
For digital chips, we use Hercules because it was proven to be faster
than Calibre.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Calibre. I think that tool is solid.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Our P&R guys use Hercules.
- Juan Carlos Diaz of Agere
Most recent tape-outs used Calibre; DRC/LVS done at ASIC vendor.
Personal experience was much better with Calibre than Hercules,
Dracula; runtime and debug ease.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We get others to do the physical. They mostly use Calibre.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use both Calibre and Diva. In some of our circuits we have been
stuck using Diva for some of our LVS but I must stress that it is
HORRIBLE!!! Cross referencing is a nightmare. I like Calibre for
LVS/DRC. We use it primarily.
- Gord Allan of Carleton University (Canada)
Calibre
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Just Calibre and no comparisons to any other tools.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Calibre currently. Working towards Hercules, but hate it's error
reporting. Often misleading errors. No interest in Dracula/Assura.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
We use Mentor Calibre
- Massimo Scipioni of STmicroelectronics
Calibre is ahead. Cadence is behind. Using Calibre and Hercules.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Mentor Calibre.
- David Fong of S3 Graphics
We are using:
DRC of full custom designs: Diva/Dracula
LVS of full custom designs: Dracula
Chip finishing: Diva/Dracula/Assura
DRC/LVS of big designs: Mentor Calibre
For big designs, Calibre is ahead of Assura/Dracula, especially in
hierarchical mode. For LVS, Calibre is especially good, if you give
it in hierarchical mode a full list of corresponding layout/schematic
cells (HCELL) and a (TEXT)-file, which attaches names to the nets
extracted from the layout for all HCELLS.
- Thorsten Wermke of Philips Semiconductors
Mentor Calibre for both DRC and LVS. Works just great.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
DRC: Mentor Calibre
LVS: Cadence Assura
- Marcello Vena of Xignal Technologies AG
We generally use Calibre. Assura works, but our runsets are not set up
100% for Assura (LVS/DRC) in some technologies.
Interesting about Calibre: we always used Calibre 9.1_6.5 and had a bit
of a weird feeling because this is really a old version. When we
changed to Calibre 9.3_6.5 we noticed, that the licensing mechanism
is much more restrictive. We cannot run hierarchical jobs any more, we
cannot open interactive sessions in parallel any more. So who really
needs Calibre 9.3_6.5 ?
- Klaus Vongehr of Philips Semiconductors
Our company is using Hercules, but I still think Mentor Calibre is the
best, although I haven't tried their latest versions. Earlier versions
of Cadence Diva are terribly slow and inaccurate. Unless it has been
substantially improved in these days, Diva has to be put to the list
bottom.
Compared to Hercules, the LVS report from Calibre is always clean and
indicative, and never misses the correct understanding of the circuit
style and device type that the generated report is pretty useful. On
the other hand, I have seen a number of times Hercules loses its grip
on particular circuit styles that odd reports have been generated.
Both are fast enough that their runtimes do not seem to be a burden.
For DRC, its it hard to compare Hercules and Calibre as both are very
mature and efficient. The sure thing is Diva will be at the bottom.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Mentor Calibre is ahead - we use this on our chips. Cadence is cleary
behind.
- Sunil Malkani of Broadcom
Mentor Calibre -- although considering Magma Mojave.
- Erica Wickstrom of PMC-Sierra
Gave up on Dracula a long time ago, currently using Calibre. In a
design last year Calibre resolved some issue Hercules couldn't
deal with.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
Our mainstream tool is still Cadence Assura for DRC/LVS/RCX, but we are
in the process of moving to Calibre at least for DRC (better runtime and
memory usage); no current experience with Hercules.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
In house we rent Assura during the last few weeks before tapeout for
our custom mixed-signal blocks. Our design services partner then uses
Calibre for the full chip. On some blocks we've used Assura, Diva,
Tanner DRC, Calibre, and finally Hercules. They each seemed to catch
some rules that the others didn't, although by the time we got to
Hercules the only error was one that was somewhat subject to
interrpretation.
- Brett Warneke of Dust Networks
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