What is best design suite to use and why?
In my limited experience, I have used Cadence and Mentor and also Synopsys tool.
Personally
- Love Synopsys DC for synthesis (nobody else is as good)
- I like Cadence schematic/layout environment (easy to use)
- Hate Cadence Assura (worst software Cadence ever produce)
- Love Mentor Calibre (best software Mentor ever produce!)
- Like Spectre (but always takes long time to get things running and to get learning)
- Like Eldo (very easy to use)
- Love ADMS (really good)
- Dont like HSIM (bad experience)
- I used Spectrerf and found it hard to use, I tried Eldorf and is much easier to use and closer to the silicon
- Like some Silvaco toolset too!
So I think Mentor is better for simulation and layout verifications, but Cadence is better for editors, doing layouts and schematic. So I would like to use DC for synthesis, Cadence layout with Calibre backend, Cadence schematic frontend with Mentor ADMS backend. That way I get the best of the companies.
Agree?, or disagree?