Opinion about Cadence Virtuoso 615 and ISR

[Etnaskynet]

Hello,

can we collect a lot of opinion about Cadence Virtuoso 615 (ISR4,5 and 6)?

Regards.

 

[Teddy]

I like all 615 releases. ISR 6 seems to fix quite a few issues. The ADEXL shows big improvements. Layout - more things to play with than I ever will use. But it also seems that Layout XL uses more resources. But I used it on top level chip layout and my machine is old. Go for it. I saw issues with latest MMSIM ISR - I could not submit remote sims.

 

[Etnaskynet]

Ok!
From my point of view, isr4 seems to be faster than isr6.

On vsr, the pin taper width seems to not work...

 

[oermens]

Hi Teddy,

Can you be specific about ADE-XL improvements? Were you using ADE-XL/MMSIM to submit jobs to LSF and found issues? I have experienced jobs hanging/dying in LSF queue with IC614 and prior.

Thanks

 

[Etnaskynet]

OK,

and about Layout activity?
VSR?
CM?
ModGen?

Regards.

 

[Teddy]

I did not say that ADEXL had issues - I said latest ISR of MMSIM did. I do not use the LSF for remote jobs but command line controlled by Sungrid Engine and similar soft.
In ADEXL they made improvements for the data viewing and management. Does not hit you in the eye though. I just like XL in general. Also they finaly made work the waveform viewer - now much better than before not still as good as it should be. I love sandwork.
Virtuoso has huge improvements in modgens and clones. They finaly work and you can use them. They also implemented fluid guardrings (mostly correctly) and those are nice - previously they did not work 100%.
I hate the palette but it;'s just me.
In general I agree wwith statement that ISR4 seems faster - I have the same here. I admit I switch between the ISRs - I do most layout in 4 for speed and overall responsiveness.

 

[Etnaskynet]

OK!

And about unexpected crashes of the framework?

Do you use RHEL 4 or 5 ?
Gnome, KDE or XFCE?

Sometimes ISR4 goes down, ISR5 seems more stable, and the same with RHEL 5, is more stable.

Regards.

 

[Teddy]

RHEL5, GNOME - seems stable but i am able to crash any ISR within 5 minutes. I never ever leave cadence running for more than 1 day.
But the latest ISR is quite good.

 

[atris]

Hi, could you provide a short tutorial considering the use of clones, because I have tried to use them (from the manual) and I could not manage to (giving a case study eg two identical differential pair in a schematic).
Thank you in advance