Visual Design Diff

ClioSoft’s Visual Design Diff (VDD) gives users the power to quickly compare two versions of a schematic or layout by graphically highlighting the differences directly in the design editor. Identifying differences between different versions of the schematic or layout becomes extremely useful in design flows or ECO flows when the designer is narrowing down the changes made to determine the cause of failure.

VDD works with the Cadence Virtuoso® platform and detects changes that include any modifications to nets, instances, layers, labels and even properties. VDD can highlight the differences between two versions of the same cell-view or between any two cell-views of the same type. Supported view types include schematics, layouts and Verilog.

VDD comes integrated with ClioSoft’s design management system but can also be deployed standalone with any other design management system or even if no design management system is being used. The ability to quickly and visually identify changes has several uses and benefits:

  • Engineers can check changes before publishing a new revision of the cell-view.
  • Managers can review changes before approval.
  • Layout engineers can identify modifications made to schematics.
  • Layout ECOs can be reviewed without the time consuming process of generating and comparing GDS.