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General >> Tech Talk >> Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1268404959

Message started by rfmems on Mar 12^th, 2010, 6:42am

Title: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by rfmems on Mar 12^th, 2010, 6:42am

Does anyone have a clue how much this license costs?
Rough range should be good enough.
I have heard a lot of it in the DGCF. But if it is too expensive, I won't bother suggesting a purchase to my boss.

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by pancho_hideboo on Mar 12^th, 2010, 7:18am

rfmems wrote on Mar 12^th, 2010, 6:42am:

Does anyone has a clue how much this license costs?
Rough range should be good enough.

http://www.agilent.com/about/newsroom/presrel/2009/08dec-em09186.html
It says "The Agilent GoldenGate version 4.4 is available December 2009 and has a starting price of under $25,000".

In addition to eternal license you can choose time base license, e.g. 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc.
Maybe "$25,000" is price for 3 or 6 months time base license.

rfmems wrote on Mar 12^th, 2010, 6:42am:

I have heard a lot of it in the DGCF.
But if it is too expensive, I won't bother suggesting a purchase to my boss.

I think it is too expensive if I consider its total performance.
See http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1262828862/29#29

You can get "a FREE GoldenGate Trial".
http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/download.jspx?cc=US&lc=eng&nid=-34269.917946&pageMode=DL

An installation task of GoldenGate is very easy, since GoldenGate utilizes CSF(Cadence Setup Search File) in Cadence ADE.

If you have much money, I recommend you to purchase BDA's Analog FastSPICE RF not Agilent GoldenGate.
http://www.berkeley-da.com/news/news_pr/news01_pr_2009_12_08.html
http://www.berkeley-da.com/prod/datasheets/Berkeley_BDA_AFS_RF_WP.pdf

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by rf-design on Mar 12^th, 2010, 3:27pm

I just got an idea that a good metric would be to count the total verification cost.

Take a project with about 50 cells and 120 hierchy verification nodes. Then expand over all corners and statistic reasonable samples and do not forget initial conception phases.

So it should be possible to

1. Having a bench project where the total license use time
2. Generating a modular cost calculation based on these metrics which is useable to calculate the verification cost w/o exercising.

That is indeed the TCOS.

The clouds will come and the stats are limiting

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by rfmems on Mar 25^th, 2010, 6:00am

pancho_hideboo wrote on Mar 12^th, 2010, 7:18am:

If you have much money, I recommend you to purchase BDA's Analog FastSPICE RF not Agilent GoldenGate.

From what I read, the strength of BDA is transient noise, which Cadence spectreRF has as well. Or did I miss something here?

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by pancho_hideboo on Mar 25^th, 2010, 6:19am

rfmems wrote on Mar 25^th, 2010, 6:00am:

From what I read, the strength of BDA is transient noise, which Cadence spectreRF has as well.

But its performance is far superior than Cadence Spectre.
http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1259714206
http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1264764783

rfmems wrote on Mar 25^th, 2010, 6:00am:

Or did I miss something here?

AFS RF full-spectrum periodic analysis.
http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1258339986/42#42

http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1269373309/10#10

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by Ken Kundert on Mar 26^th, 2010, 2:11am

I would not put much stock in Pancho Hideboo's recommendations of simulators. He has a personal grudge against Cadence and he takes almost every opportunity to slam their simulators and promote all other simulators.

-Ken

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by pancho_hideboo on Mar 27^th, 2010, 12:51am

Ken Kundert wrote on Mar 26^th, 2010, 2:11am:

He has a personal grudge against Cadence

Right. I don't like Cadence.
But even if I like Cadence, I can't find out any remarkable simulation performance in Cadence Spectre, especially if I consider its high price.

Advantage of Cadence Spectre is a tight and exclusive linkage with Cadence DFII especially for backend tool.

Ken Kundert wrote on Mar 26^th, 2010, 2:11am:

he takes almost every opportunity to slam their simulators and promote all other simulators.

If I choose recommendations in Cadence Products, I can recommend NCSim, Virtuoso Layout Editor and Assura.

Currently BDA's AFS are gathering much interest from many designers.
You and Cadence have to admit this fact.

Even I can admit that Verilog-A environment of Cadence Spectre is most stable and reliable compared to other vendor's simulators.

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by pancho_hideboo on Mar 27^th, 2010, 1:09am

pancho_hideboo wrote on Mar 12^th, 2010, 7:18am:

rfmems wrote on Mar 12^th, 2010, 6:42am:

I have heard a lot of it in the DGCF.
But if it is too expensive, I won't bother suggesting a purchase to my boss.

I think it is too expensive if I consider its total performance.
See http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1262828862/29#29

http://www.designers-guide.org/Forum/YaBB.pl?num=1232855139

- Concept of Simulator Use Model is fairly different compared to Agilent RFDE(ADSsim) and Cadence Spectre.
- Versatilities as Simulator are poor compared to Agilent RFDE(ADSsim).
- There are still many many bugs especially regarding user interface in ADE.
- Standard Verilog-A Compiler(va2gg) is very buggy.
Note : We can choose two compilers, Verilog-A (va2gg) or Verilog-AMS (tiburon) in GoldenGate.
- Timedomain Solvers(Time Shooting and Time Balance) are not available for autonomous circuits in current Agilent GoldenGate.
- Timedomain Solvers(Time Shooting and Time Balance) are not available for QPSS type analysis in current Agilent GoldenGate. They are available only for PSS type analysis.
- We can not set initial current of inductor for Transient Analysis of GoldenGate
- We can not set node voltage for AC and SP Analysis of GoldenGate
- We have to use "qWave" which is a special plot tool for GoldenGate if we will utilize full ability of GoldenGate, e.g. monte calro.
- ".biaschk"(=Assertion) abilities are not available in GoldenGate
- Transient Noise Analysis is not available in GoldenGate
- HSPICE netlist is not supported in GoldenGate. But I think it will be supported in very near future.
- HB Analysis of GoldenGate support upto three tones.
- We have to specify S-parameter file as absolute path for NPORT
- We can't use ADS's system model library in GoldenGate

- Quad CPU licenses are available as one package price in GoldenGate
- Multiple parameters sweep simulation and their plotting are good and easy to use
- HB Analysis of three tone having many harmonics can converge very quickly
- Optimizer using runtime measurement which is called as "performance" is available as standard ability.
- We can use three plotting tools, Cadence Wavescan, Agilent ADS Data Display and Agilent qWave.
- Virtual source ability which can override signal sources in schematic is available
- We can do linear and nonlinear stability analysis without specifying feedback loop.
- We don't have to kick start oscillator in both Transient and HB Analyses. Perturbations for startup are inserted automatically if needed.
- Small signal noise analysis is available in Envelope Analysis of GoldenGate.
- We can consider local phase noise effects by using "NOISECOR: File-based Correlated Noise Source" as well as NF effects of signal path in GoldenGate.

Totally I feel Agilent EEsof don't put much importance in RFIC business.
This is one of reason why I don't recommend Agilent GoldenGate.

ADSsim has been improved to be able to read Cadence Spectre netlist directly for RFDE.
But Agilent terminated development of RFDE at ADS2009. Last version of RFDE is RFDE2009 based on ADS2009.
So there is no RFDE for ADS2009Update1.
Now I feel ADSsim will be improved and enhanced to have more linkage with Synopsys HSPICE not Cadence Spectre.

Title: Re: Cost of Agilent GoldenGate License
Post by George Robinson on Dec 20^th, 2010, 10:43pm

All contributors here made real discussion format on the topic of this thread. I got real stuff from here and thanks for all.