Notes on installing Cadence

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Understanding and Installing Cadence

The installation (and use) of the EDA package Cadence seems like folklore, nobody seems to know what they are doing, while some "gods" out there seem to get it right, they are not telling.

Major Parts of Cadence / Overview

There are four major parts of Cadence, each part consisting of a collection of packages. Note that there is some overlap of the packages in various parts. For example, the IC package is used in almost all parts of Cadence. For that matter, the IC package seems to be the base upon which the rest of Cadence is installed.

The following is largely taken from the 'Software Selection Form'. When I say 'part' here, I don't mean 'part number', I'm just refering to a big chunk of Cadence.

Cadence Part 'Name' Description
Custom IC Bundle Design of analog IC chips

Names of packages, and what they do

It seems that even the package names are not well understood.

Cadence Name What I think they are
OpenAccess This is an "open" database that allows interoperability between different vendor's products. It is an industry standard, not a Cadence thing. At the time of this writing (2007), this was fairly new, and not widely implemented. However, should it be widely adopted, it will ease the interoperability of various EDA programs.
IC Analog chip design. Use this for designing transisters on a piece of silicon. Also for RF chips. While this is initiall just for IC chip design, it contains lots of the "foundation parts" of Cadence -- most of the other packages depend on this being installed.
IUS (Old package name was LDV.) Digital design stuff. For VHDL. Also, has some verification tools.
ICC Chip router engine? Used with IC.
Assura (Don't really know.)
MMSIM Some sort of analog circuit simulation package. Again used in IC.


First, what to install first.

It seems that this OpenAccess needs to be installed first. IC seems to depend on it.

  1. OpenAccess
    • Should be called the generic name.
    • Create an instance of it called .../openaccess
  2. IUS
    • don't remember
  3. IC
    • On configuration, you need to deal with IUS

There is some file in /software/Cadence/IC/tools.lnx86/dfII/samples/local called cdsinit. Read it, and follow the instructions. (Make a directory 'local' and copy it there.)

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