Nov 14, 2016 You can buy the tool obviously from Cadence and the pricing are not that straight forward. Virtuoso is a very big suite of products and therefore you can customize your purchase according to your design needs. For more information the products (to. In this case you still need to overwrite it by this new file. Always invoke 'virtuoso' in your /cds directory because all setup files are in this directory. Type virtuoso & at the command prompt. The “&” is for background execution, it is useful when we want to keep the command prompt in the same console.
Cadence IC Virtuoso 06.17.700 (x86)(Linux)
Cadence IC Virtuoso 06.17.700 (x86) (Linux) | 5.81 GB
Cadence Design Systems, Inc., the leader in global electronic design innovation, has presented 16.17 version of IC Virtuoso. This suite of tools facilitates the full-custom design of integrated circuits. The Virtuoso offers a wide range of design and verification tools that provide complete front-to-back solutions for varying design requirements, such as full-custom integrated circuits and digital integrated circuits.
Cadence ASIC and IC-Design The Cadence Virtuoso Platform is the industry standard for design of analog and integrated circuits (Front to Back), HF, Mixed-Signal and Custom Digital Designs. With the Virtuoso expansion level you get a low-cost access to this common standard. Analog circuits require to respect the specifications for voltages, currents and charges as well as be able to easily and efficiently adopt different parameters for resistors, capacitors and transistors. The Virtuoso Platform supports you in the realisation of your development targets by automated design steps. Virtuoso leads you through the general design steps in a continuous flow and gives you extensive functions for optimization of the space requirement, the energy consumption and the improved performance of your chip. The whole flow offers possibilities for the analysis and the consideration of parasitic implementation effects.
With the process design kits (PDK) of the foundry you will obtain all manufacturer rules, the technology setup, Spice models, a reference library and allready pre-defined circuit parts (IP) for easy reuse. Given that Virtuoso is included in the reference flow at all foundries you minimize your risk with the easy transfer of the design data to the foundry, or even if you change the foundry or the process variable. In the open data base your design specifications are saved together with your design rules and are available easy to access for further optimizations.
Via the eDA-Card, the flexible licensing form, you get for a short term acces to the various Cadence simulators and layout modules. So you are able to professionally optimize your designs with high-end-tools and a managable budget. You only pay for the terms you are using the special tools. Process Design Kits (PDK)
Many IC and ASIC developments are made by enterprises without their own semiconductor production, so fabless. Accordingly you rely on to receive the rules about the manufacturing processes from the foundry. In the PDKs all process-related informations are described. Therefore you can not only find a second source for your manufacturing but also realize migrations of e.g. 0,35 µm to 0,25 µm with the respecitve PDKs. For the Cadence tools you receive a comprehensive support by leading foundries at a high quality level.
Powerful Configuration Levels The Virtuoso Platform includes different modules which offer an optimal support for each sub-step in the design process. Via the integrated cockpit the users get along quickly and can easily switch between the views like schematic, analysis or layout. The separation of the functions in different modules is also for the optimisation of the license costs in combination with the eDA-Card or as license. In addition to this different configuration levels are available of each module. The complexity is classified into the levels L, XL and GXL. The design data are compatible across the different configuration levels. Thus a reuse of the once-designed circuits is possible here too.
Bit depth: 32bit Language: English Tabletka: present System requirements: System Requirements: Linux Supported Operating Systems: RHEL 5, RHEL 6, SLES 11.0
I contacted the Cadence office as a PhD student and also a faculty member to inquiry their price for an academic license. After 8 emails back and forth I noticed that they are not willing to answer the simple question of how much we have to pay to get access to Cadence Virtuoso software.
It surprised me a lot and I felt upset and stopped the email communication. I actually fully understand now why people tend to use pirated software instead of paying for it.
I sincerely tried to pay for a license and could not even get a quoted price!
Can someone explain here why do we have such secretive behavior? There is no price list on their website and even when you contact them they don't reveal it. Very strange indeed.
Update:
To make this a better question and not a rant, I should tailor my question:
What other options are available for IC Layout design when Cadence is not an option?
Ehsan
EhsanEhsan
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closed as off-topic by brhans, pipe, Dmitry Grigoryev, Scott Seidman, Daniel GrilloJul 29 '16 at 11:30
This question does not appear to be about electronics design within the scope defined in the help center.
If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
1 Answer
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Cadence does not make money with educational licenses, however they support universities because they often cooperate with the industry and train future engineers.
For commercial use license costs depend on the number of licenses you buy and of course can be negotiated. For academic use the license costs are very small and are more like a 'handling fee'. I live in Europe and the prices for academic software can be found here. This should give you a rough idea what prices to expect.
These academic prices are very low compared to commercial prices, therefore you need to make sure that they are only used for educational purposes. For example you have to keep track of the license usage, the people who have access to the software and keep record of this information for at least five years!
The 'University Software Program' is available in many locations, details can be found here
So, keep in mind that you are more an academic partner than a customer (unless you are willing to shell out a few 100k for a single seat license package) and give it another try.