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Customer FeedbackBelow, some customers share their experiences with SynaptiCAD's products. If you would like to share your own experience using our products, send them to Sales Office.. TestBencher Pro has been invaluable at all levels of our ASIC design. Its flexibility allows us to create testbenches for simple submodules within minutes, or highly complex transaction based models for modules and module groups. Synapticad has provided outstanding customer service and product training, and has in my opinion delievered the highest value per dollar of any tool we have purchased to date. The waveform and datasheet generator save many painful hours of sketching wafeform timing by hand.
Jay Abel
Dear SynaptiCAD, As a customer of Synapticad products for the past three years, I want to give you some feedback on your Verilog simulator and test bench generation tools. I have used the Verilogger product on three different ASIC designs for Hewlett-Packard Company and have been successful in meeting a demanding schedule with fully functional parts. I contribute my high level of performance and success to the use of your Verilogger product. The integrated editor, simulator, interactive debugger and waveform viewer has provided me with tools to efficiently design and test various hardware blocks in an ASIC. I have been able to perform initial verification of various Verilog hardware blocks using the waveform drawing capabilities of your product where the test bench is produced automatically from the waveforms. This has saved me considerable time during the development process since I can perform an initial verification without writing a single line of Verilog test bench code. I can also use the various waveform files for documentation of the ASIC design. After I have performed the initial verification, I spend a considerable amount of time in manually generating a comprehensive Verilog test bench for the ASIC design with associated Verilog models. I have recently purchased the Testbencher product which adds test bench generation capability to the integrated environment described above. I have been able to generate Verilog code models for various peripherals connected to an ASIC under test in record time without writing much Verilog code. I plan on using Testbencher for generating comprehensive test benches that I had previously generated manually and were prone to many errors. I can generate the various waveform files for the various models connected to the chip-under test with self-checking capability (samples) using the integrated waveform drawing tool and Testbencher generates the Verilog test bench. Testbencher is the most complete and comprehensive Verilog design tool that I have ever used. Synapticad has an excellent customer service department. I have communicated various issues with the Synapticad toolset and have received a response at all times within 24 hours. I appreciate the support and flexibility that Synapticad has provided to me during my short development schedules.
George Lysy
"I'm impressed with SynaptiCAD, they have a great simulator at a very accessible price. I found it to be 100% Cadence Verilog-XL compatible. My test case simulated the same RTL code from a big FPGA (Xilinx Virtes-300/600/1000 and an Altera 10k150) in Verilog XL and in VeriLogger with no problems. Even on a machine with only 128M of RAM, VeriLogger performed well. The SynaptiCAD staff was very quick to answer any question and I have always found them to be very responsive and helpful."
Gill Romero
"Hi Gary,
Sam Mitchum
"Hi Gary,
Mike Kentley
"Hi Gary,
Jim Means
"The SynaptiCAD tool replaced our obsolete tool Timing Designer. It is far more capable than Timing
Designer and was very useful last year in re-doing 407/415 systems. SDRAM timing and guided PCB layout
accordingly. Going forward, I see it being very useful in any new terminal system board effort we certainly
will have to move up to the likes of DDRSDRAM or CellularRAM and a new CPU will have its own new non-SDRAM
timing-driven layout exigencies to take into account.
Chief Engineer
�I use SynaptiCAD's WaveFormer Pro tool to perform not only graphical timing verification and documentation
but to also simulate in real time the logic I will be generating in VHDL. I find that being able to visually
see the signal waveforms as I am designing them allows me to realize state machines in significantly less
time then attempting to generate a VHDL implementation and a test bench based off of a waveform spec.
Paul Merana
"Waveformer Pro has been invaluable to me for working thru design ideas as well as documenting the design implementation. One of my recent designs, a Crossbar Switch Arbiter implemented in an Altera CPLD, was a heavily pipelined architecture using time division multiplexing. Waveformer Pro was used to initially brainstorm device operation and to document how each pipe element worked and would feed the next element in the pipe. Waveformer Pro has also been used to document system timing considerations, which have formed the backbone of a 64Gbit router design. All timing considerations have been included in a waveform diagram and timing spreadsheet indicating how all router line cards must implement the back-end design. This diagram will become the basis of our system design documentation. Waveformer Pro has been easy to use and exactly the tool that today's design engineer needs to include as part of one's design methodology."
Andrew M. Norton
"The combination of WaveFormer Pro and HP logic analyzers lets designers use captured waveforms as stimulus vectors to drive the simulation of a circuit. This capability allows fast debugging and should help our customers bring their products to market sooner.”
Patrick J. Byrne, General Manager As a group of ASIC design engineers we often deal with chip, interface and system level timings. Powerful simulation tools are used to verify if the timing design goals were achieved. Nevertheless, the planning of the timing must be done with pencil and paper. Documenting the complex waveforms with the built in drawing tools of a standard word processing software is another tedious task. And who will repeat that lengthy procedure when a design modification requires a slightly changed timing?
The WaveFormer is a valuable tool that bans paper and pencil from the desk when planning complex timing
diagrams, and it is not more difficult to use. Entering and editing signals and timing parameters is
quickly learned by doing. Worth mentioning is the fact how fast you handled a request regarding a bug
in WaveFormer Pro 5.1, ... nobody is perfect, but it would not matter if everybody would respond as
fast as you did.
H. Thielemann, SIEMENS AG, Germany Just thought I would drop you a note to let you know Panametrics Engineering loves WaveFormer Pro for designing Viewlogic Simulation stimulus...
Steve Besser I had to make a decision a year ago whether to go with WaveFormer or Timing Designer [by Chronology Corporation]. I am glad I picked WaveFormer! You have done a great job adding new features, keep up the good work.
One request I would like to make: when entering timing relationships, it would be very nice to just
double click on the timing constraint, and a dialog box pops up with a link directly into the timing
database, so that I can quickly enter a library timing parameter. This was handy in Timing Designer,
but it isn't enough to switch back ;-)
Stephen Noftall Subject: Many Kudos... Well, I recieved WaveFormer this morning around 10:30am and its around 12:30 now. In 2 hours I feel I've gotten a pretty good feeling for the program. Excellent tutorial. It shows how to use the software in a real situation but doesn't belabor the trival stuff. From the doc notes, it seems like you've been adding significant functionality with each new release, yet you've been able to keep the program easy to learn. Given my several previous experiences trying to get up to speed on CAD programs in a day or so, you have done an incredible job. Its easy enough to learn and use that I am already _designing_ system timing in the program, rather than just entering and checking my hand-written hen scratches. WOW! Also, I didn't realize it when I ordered the sotware, but thanks for not having a dongle. I hate having to carry those darn things around with my laptop if I take work home. I'm always scared that someone will steal it or I'll lose it. Well, I got to get back to the grindstone. Oh, by the way, the reason that I'm now designing on the system is that after entering about a dozen waveforms, etc in a complicated dram controller, I found subtle timing error that now I have to fix. I suspect that finding this problem early probably just paid for the tool.
C. Bolton
Subject: WaveFormer Testimonial I've been using the Waveformer since 1994 and find it to be an indispensible tool in both design analysis and synthesis. I've applied the Waveformer to optimize both performance and cost in product upgrades. I use it to synthesize new designs as well. It allows me to define my timing constraints which help to determine what components I will use. Once chosen, I can re-simulate and use the timing diagrams as a reference for simulation waveforms. I can freely investigate scenarios such as matching memory to processor speeds without the need for schematics or behavioral models. The timing diagrams are used and re-used from upgrade to upgrade and from design to new design. The Waveformer is an important tool which bridges the gap between the worlds of analysis and synthesis.
Ralf Chlipalski
WaveFormer's instant feedback environment takes the headache out of system level timing. No digital designer should be without it!
Mark Knecht
I had thought to write a simple wave viewer in Visual Basic to examine some Verilog VCD files I had generated years ago. And then it occurred to me that I should first look for a freeware wave viewer on the Internet. When I discovered Synapticad's free Waveviewer program, I downloaded it immediately. When I opened one of my VCD files in Waveviewer, everything was displayed correctly the first time, which surprised me. Waveviewer is far more sophisticated and powerful than anything I could have written in Visual Basic -- what an unexpected gift.
Leon Donfray
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