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

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

Andrew,

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

Paul