Panel: Multi-vendor Tool Integration Experiences

With an increasing number of hardware design teams adopting defacto and industry-endorsed framework standards, the depth of empirical data associated with multi-vendor tool integration has grown significantly during the past few years. This panel will explore the current state of design tool integration from the perspective of both tool users and suppliers. Based on their experiences, panelists will discuss the level of ease or difficulty associated with integrating tools from multiple sources, as well as the observed benefits and drawbacks, if any, of an integrated design environment. Suppliers of frameworks and design tools maintain the benefits of an integrated design environment are numerous and that the burden of integration has been substantially reduced in recent years due to the proliferation of open systems. Have users found this to be the case? Furthermore, it goes without saying that the level of ease or difficulty of integration depends on the depth desired, but are users discovering other hidden issues? For example, does the ease or difficulty of integration also depend on either the kinds of tools comprising the design environment, the specific source of the tools such as in-house tools versus commercially available products or the particular framework? How much engineering effort is necessary to achieve a reasonable level of integration, or for that matter, what constitutes a reasonable level of integration? Similarly, what is the appropriate level of integration necessary to achieve the maximum return on investment? Is their a point of diminishing returns? If so, where does it lie? Finally, are today´s frameworks and standards both robust and mature enough to support the needs of current and future production design environments? Panelists will be asked to respond to these and other issues. The panel comprises a combination of users and suppliers of design tools and framework technology and also includes representation from the CAD Framework Initiative. Suppliers will be queried about their views on the state of integration today and its likely future direction. Responses from suppliers will then be contrasted with the experiences and opinions of end users.