The Designer's Guide Community Forum

The Designer's Guide Community Forum
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl
Design >> Mixed-Signal Design >> Why Mentor Mixed-signal tool?
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1114594730

Message started by raymond_luo2003 on Apr 27^th, 2005, 2:38am

Title: Why Mentor Mixed-signal tool?
Post by raymond_luo2003 on Apr 27^th, 2005, 2:38am

Dear All,

I am a mixed-signal design engineer. I have been used Cadence tool and Synopsis tool for high speed analog IC design and mixed-signal simulation for quite while.

Recently, things is going to change: Our boss want to change all the analog/ mixed-signal tool from Cadence/Synopsis to Mentor Graphic, the REASON is Mentor offer us very attractive price for whole mixed-signal tool chain. I have none experience on the Mentor tool, but a quite vague impression of Mentor tool is that Calibre tool is good enough while the rest (schematic capture / simulation / full customer layout) might be not.

Can any guys with experience on both Cadence/Synopsis mixed-signal and Mentor mixed-signal share your experience?

Any advantage or disadvantage you feel in using Mentor Mixed-signal tool?
How about the foundry design kit support from TSMC, UMC and so on?

Thank you in advance!!

List of Mentor tool
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Schematic Capture
— Design Architect IC
Simulation
— Modelsim (Digital)
— Eldo (transistor level)
— A/MS with ADMS (single Kernal with Eldo and Modelsim together)
Full Custom Layout
— ICStation & IC Assemble
Physical Verification and Extraction
— Calibre & Calibre xRC
Post Layout Simulation
— ADMS

Title: Re: Why Mentor Mixed-signal tool?
Post by Paul on Apr 28^th, 2005, 12:46am

Raymond,

Regarding simulator comparison, you can have a look at the following posts on this forum:
http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/?board=rfdesign;action=display;num=1066074560
http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/?board=circuit;action=display;num=1094199797

I have been using Mentor tools for quite some time and they are OK, but I have the impression Cadence spends more efforts to improve their tools and add new features. MGC schematic capture is definitely not as user-friendly as the Virtuoso platform. On the other hand Modelsim and ADMS compete very well with Cadence.

Beyond the tool question and the needs for the designers to learn new tools, your boss should be aware that it will be almost impossible to rework previous designs or re-use parts of them in new developments if you change the tools. I am not aware of any bridge to move designs from CDBA to an MGC database. Of course you can use GDSII, but that's only for the layout view.

Concerning the design kits for MGC, AFAIK most of them are delivered by Mentor, not by the foundries, except for the device models. I am not exactly sure about this, so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong...

Paul