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Other CAD Tools >> Entry Tools >> Virtuoso Layout Editor VS. Virtuoso XL Layout Edit
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1112625538

Message started by raymond_luo2003 on Apr 4^th, 2005, 2:23am

Title: Virtuoso Layout Editor VS. Virtuoso XL Layout Edit
Post by raymond_luo2003 on Apr 4^th, 2005, 2:23am

Dear all,

I would like to get your suggestion on which tool is sufficient to do the layout job for an experienced layout engineer, say, more than 5 years hands on experience.

Virtuoso Layout Editor has PCELL feature, while Virtuoso XL Layout Editor has extended features such as connectivity driven and design rule driven. From this point of view, Virtuoso XL layout editor is definitely better than Virtuoso Layout Editor.

But for a seasoned layout engineer, would Virtuoso Layout Editor is sufficient for normal layout task? How much more productivity would Virtuoso XL Layout Editor bring comparing with Virtuoso Layout editor in terms of time, 50% or more? Would you still suggest your boss to buy Virtuoso XL although you are a seasoned layout engineer?

This question is raised because our boss want to save money to buy Virtuoso Layout Editor instead of Virtuoso XL.

Thanks in advance,
Raymond

Title: Re: Virtuoso Layout Editor VS. Virtuoso XL Layout
Post by DReynolds on Apr 4^th, 2005, 5:58am

Raymond, I would suggest using VXL because of the connectivity. It makes LVS almost redundant... but ask your team how much time they spend in debugging lvs based problems and what would it be worth to have that go away? Also, as a designer, I like the fact that with VXL, I know that the layout guy has the devices I specified, with the correct w.l and stripes and such (cascodes, diff pairs, etc)

David Reynolds

ps in a former life, where we did not have many copies of xl, we had the person doing the layout do gen from source in xl to get all the devices, and then go back to virtuoso to hook it up. Good news/bad news was that it did show the difference between having connectivity aware vs not ...

Title: Re: Virtuoso Layout Editor VS. Virtuoso XL Layout
Post by Paul on Apr 5^th, 2005, 1:13pm

Hello,

I agree with Raymond's point that XL almost makes LVS unnecessary. But notice that the connectivity verification running in the background requires some CPU power. Personnally I would discourage you from running VXL from beginning to the end of the layout task without having an up-to-date machine. E.g., it works correctly on a Sun Ultra 10 (400MHz, 1GB RAM), but I consider that machine as being the lower bound of the range. I agree, that machine is not so recent... No experience on Linux.

One more remark: if you have a repetitive design (this was my case), it was faster to give up XL and do copy-paste, losing the connectivity information, than redrawing the repeated parts several times with connectivity info.

As a final statement, VXL is definitively the future in layout, but you must be aware of the current limitations (CPU, no support of copy-paste, little device matching operations). Finally, check with your layout designers, it may take some time to convince them to change their working style.

Paul

Title: Re: Virtuoso Layout Editor VS. Virtuoso XL Layout
Post by Andrew Beckett on Apr 5^th, 2005, 10:48pm

Note you do have the ability to "clone" one part of a layout to another. This is like a copy, but it matches the clone against an identical part of the schematic, and re-associates the nets and instances against a target set.

Regards,

Andrew.

Title: Re: Virtuoso Layout Editor VS. Virtuoso XL Layout
Post by Paul on Apr 6^th, 2005, 3:01am

Andrew,

thanks for your expert advice! I was not aware of that possibility...

Paul