Why Mentor Mixed-signal tool?

ezwave mentor

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 Simulat

calibre price mentor

disadvatage
less desgin kits from foundaries
RF simulation is not good if it is compared to cadence

IC station is good
ADMS is also very good "but not for RF"

mentor mixed signal

I have a experience of using ELDO & ELDO-RF. It is not a very bad simulator. But compare to cadence, it is definately not on par (30% down). But again considering the cost factor, it is certainly advantageous.

About IC Station, I dont think it's a industry standard tool for the layout. Virtuoso is the leader.

Other tools not used..

Added after 2 minutes:

Only mentor has a good tool i.e. calibre, which is the market leader in DRC, LVS, EXT.

synopsis mixed signal simulators

I actally beleieve that Mentors ADMS is superior to Cadences AMS for mixed signa - faster at least
The biggest disadvantage I see in design kits which are proven out by other users. Otherwise I think Mentor tools are not bad at all.

By the way also think that Calibre is better integrated within Cadence than within Mentor.....

So if the question is - can I design good IC by using Mentors tools I say yes since i did it (2.5GBs CDR both on bipolar and 0.18CMOS)
Are there any limitation compared to Cadence - yes. It is not as supported as Cadence and even to find experienced CAD support for it is hard.

ezwave integration spectre

if mixed-signal, i suggest cadence

drc lvs thought leadership

abaiyi said:

if mixed-signal, i suggest cadence

Click to expand...

man if you need points buy it or write good posts
raymond_luo2003 need some answers about mentor graphis tools and not our opinion about other things
...............
about Mentor Graphics
Calibre is the best for DRC, LVS than Dracula or other tool from Cadence you will see that
Analog design artist is a nice tool , for simulation you can use xelga or hspice and both are good tool (I think spectre rf is a little more good than this 2 )
Teddy and sunny153 have right ...for design and simulations mentor have good tools but not so good for layout design ....
about design kits ...that is not a problem..but will cost more

cadence vs mentor vs synopsys

Funny you say so Sergio, I would absolutely prefer IC Station for Layout. This is all due to the 'strokes'. It is a couple of years ago that I used Cadence, but I guess Cadence still haven´t got strokes.
When you first know all the strokes you can work extremely fast, and all the keyboard shortcuts in Cadence is simply in your 'hands'.
Regarding the simulation-viewer you really should use EZwave, and not Xelga. I don't even think that Xelga is supported any more. With ezwave Mentor has taken a lot of the good features from Cadence. I.e. the calculator and the pick-up tool where you probe the different paths in the schematic.
And yes Calibre is superb, but ADMS sucks.

calibre & superb

puzzled

mentor ic station design kit

I ahve used eldo for many years now. I haven't used other tools from Mentor, but I think that eldo is very good and robust simulator. Almost never crashes. In the first few years I thought Xlega sucks, but then I found out that actually it had many powerful features. But, yes, in certain aspects it is not very comfortable to use. Good thing is eldo can be integrated with analog artist. Haven't used EzWave, but assume it should be better than Xelga.

mentors>ic station

I used Mentor and Cadence for pure analog IC design.
Early Mentor had a very nice frontend for eldo (AccuSimII).
But last years Design Architect uses for schematic capture and simulation.
It's very inconveniently for analog design, although eldo is very fast and robust simulator.
ICStation is very powerful and easy to use layout editor with integrated non-hierarchical version Calibre. Yes, strokes are cool!!!

My opinion: Cadence is better for simulation, Mentor is better for layout.

cadence ic design sucks

I have used Eldo, and Design Architect and they are not bad. With Cadence, your left hand is on the shortcuts forever; With the DArchitect, all you need is a mouse and the elegant strokes that do all the work. cool!!

I haven't used ICStation myself, but people that i have talked to have a postive opinion of it. May be they are too cautious to simply say that it is superior to Cadence but i don't know exactly.

Personally, i don't like scripting (and by extension Eldo and Hspice, but i have used both in an industry setting at different companies) although i am quite aware of its many advantages. I like Analog Artist/Spectre better.

A tool is just as good as the support that is available at your site for it and your experience of it. Given good enough support, i think Mentor and Cadence are comparable and have their own strengths and weaknesses.

I have experience in both tools abaut 2 years, and from my side is best is IC station ,then Cadence. Yes,Cadence in same aspect simple ,but other difficult.One disadvantage of Mentor Grafics IC - not enough support desigen kit for IC Station by
foundry