VersIC overview

VersIC is a Design Data Management tool for IC Designers that provides a unified interface to modern software configuration management (SCM) tools from Cadence Virtuoso. Fully integrated auto-checkouts and checkins are enabled with no back-end database user knowledge required. Cadence simulation methodologies are fully supported, and sophisticated release methodologies are provided via the interface to Perforce IPLM. VersIC supports Perforce Helix and Subversion.

VersIC/Helix is also available for Synopsys Custom Compiler and Keysight ADS.

• Open architecture

  • VersIC differentiates itself from the other tools in this space by its use of off-the-shelf SCM tools with standard repositories. By ensuring that no custom components are used in the creation and management of our repositories, customers are guaranteed full access with any of the standard clients (P4V, TortoiseSVN, rapidSVN, command-line clients etc). Customers are never forced to use VersIC to get access to their design data.

• Performance

  • VersIC uses modern SCM tools (Helix and Subversion) which operate over TCP/IP with minimal network latency. Other tools in this space utilize "link-farms" that enforce dependencies on NFS and other notoriously slow file-system components. This, in combination with meta-data caching and parallelization of DM operations, has resulted in VersIC benchmarking significantly faster than other DM tools in this space.

• Remote Site Capability

  • VersIC works with Helix replication servers (e.g. Edge Servers, Forwarding Replicas) and with distributed solutions for Subversion such as provided by WANdisco.

• Repository Data Mining

  • As part of the data-management checkin process design objects are tagged with labels that can be used to track status, eg: a block may be "DRC_OK" or "LVS_OK" etc. These labels can then be analyzed across the lifetime of a project and reused on subsequent projects. For example, VersIC can determine how many designers worked on a block, how long it took to complete the block, what dependencies the block had in the context of the whole design, etc. This information can then be leveraged to determine the real status of a design and help identify problem blocks.

• Workspace Configuration Management

  • VersIC integrates with MethodICs IPLM, which allows for rapid creation and update of workspaces from a project and all its dependencies.

• Robust Tapeout/IP Methodologies

  • Releases are done via IPLM - each release in IPLM is an immutable snapshot of all the data in your project.  

• Visual Diffs (MergeIC)

  • VersIC can show the history between layout/schematic versions visually using layer overlays. This is done intelligently and can differentiate between ECO's, functional changes etc. This is useful for merging changes between two cellviews, diffs etc.