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Isn't the Library Manager actually the problem with DM?

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I've been using Composer for about 10 years now and in my honest opinion the way the Library manager is working is the problem. Or to be more precise, the way it is not working, at least for 5.1.41. As the design goes on, a particular cellName will get a lot of cellViews: schematic, config, symbol, layout, av_extracted and so on, and now we can also have the ADE states saved as cellViews. This fills up the cellView column pretty fast, and if you want to have a little backup of a view, specially the av_extracted and layout views are very often duplicated as layouters experiment to reduce parasitics. Configs also tend to get plentiful as schematics are replaced with av_extracted views. If you use something like DesignSync then earlier revisions get suffixes added with _1_2 etc. and needless to say no engineer can guess just from such a name what to use if he is instantiating somebody elses design.

The Library Manager need at least one more column where the viewVariants are listed. That way it would be possible to list variants of a cellView in a more user friendly way. Adding the possibility to place a comment on each variant that shows up in a text field inside the Library Manager somewhere would make "visual scanning" of design data easier.

With such a viewVariants list you could "grey" out the versions of the cellView that are on DM and a right click on a particular variant could offer the possibility to check it out or to ask for a diff vs. the current version.

Talking about diff reminds me that there is no real good way to "diff" views unless they are text. At least not in vanilla Cadence. Normally you would not check out a new version of a colleagues design unless he has made a lot of serious changes. Often you use the block of somebody elses design as a "load" or a "source" for your own design, and you wouldn't like to have that "schematic has been changed since last extraction" error if he is sleeping in Japan while you sweat in Europe and tape/out is tomorrow. Juat to exagerate.

Library Manager hasn't changed much in 10 years and that is the core problem. If Cadence has fixed that for IC66.x then fine, then nothing will happen on DM until industry has migrated in about 5 years (or 1 year after EOL message for 5.1.x series from Cadence)
--
Svenn


Originally posted in cdnusers.org by svenn
Parents

  • Hi Svenn,

    I don't think the library manager is the problem for DM, it just makes an underlying problem more visible.
    I have worked on projects, where I counted in total 126 different 'layout' view names. Some cells had
    up to 10 different layout view names like layout_new, layout_save, layout_good, layout_2 etc.
    This is working style, personal preference, being afraid of loosing things...

    Data management does require a complete new way of thinking.
    If I am following the DM paradigm, then I check-in my work at stages, where it means something to me e.g first part of
    a functionality is implemented.
    I put useful comments in the log message, that hopefully still mean something to me in 6 months from now and hopefully
    somebody else does understand them too.
    I can go back to any earlier version that I checked in. This is nothing else then having layout_new or layout_save,
    just that they are named differently now.
    How many of those versions you see, depends on the work model you use. If you use a shared work model where many
    people work in the same work area, then yes, that can be plenty. If you work in a private work model, where the configuration only belongs to you, then you are the owner of what you see.


    A good way to deal with exploding views is to come up with naming conventions. You can enforce them with access controls
    if you want.You can not prevent them from being created, but you can prevent the users from checking them into your data base.

    I personally would not like to see something to be greyed out. You limit users what they can use or do and if somebody
    really wants to use schematic_1_2, why not? BTW, Only the DM tool could determine if something is managed or not.
    The library manager is coming from Cadence. Yes, it can be customized or completely re-written. That would have to be done
    from the DM vendor though.


    Cheers,

    Britta


    Originally posted in cdnusers.org by Britta
Reply

  • Hi Svenn,

    I don't think the library manager is the problem for DM, it just makes an underlying problem more visible.
    I have worked on projects, where I counted in total 126 different 'layout' view names. Some cells had
    up to 10 different layout view names like layout_new, layout_save, layout_good, layout_2 etc.
    This is working style, personal preference, being afraid of loosing things...

    Data management does require a complete new way of thinking.
    If I am following the DM paradigm, then I check-in my work at stages, where it means something to me e.g first part of
    a functionality is implemented.
    I put useful comments in the log message, that hopefully still mean something to me in 6 months from now and hopefully
    somebody else does understand them too.
    I can go back to any earlier version that I checked in. This is nothing else then having layout_new or layout_save,
    just that they are named differently now.
    How many of those versions you see, depends on the work model you use. If you use a shared work model where many
    people work in the same work area, then yes, that can be plenty. If you work in a private work model, where the configuration only belongs to you, then you are the owner of what you see.


    A good way to deal with exploding views is to come up with naming conventions. You can enforce them with access controls
    if you want.You can not prevent them from being created, but you can prevent the users from checking them into your data base.

    I personally would not like to see something to be greyed out. You limit users what they can use or do and if somebody
    really wants to use schematic_1_2, why not? BTW, Only the DM tool could determine if something is managed or not.
    The library manager is coming from Cadence. Yes, it can be customized or completely re-written. That would have to be done
    from the DM vendor though.


    Cheers,

    Britta


    Originally posted in cdnusers.org by Britta
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