Feature Story

By Kat Rollin

November 27, 2007 — When it comes to integrated circuits and circuit boards, good things come in small, and smaller packages. Smaller geometries, new materials, and increasingly embedded designs create new levels of complexity. Mentor Graphics offers innovative products and solutions that help engineers overcome the design challenges they face in the increasingly complex worlds of printed circuit board and chip design. To get the most out of great software, you have to pair it with first-rate infrastructure. Having a system go down in the middle of an intricate design or long-running simulation is unacceptable. With the stable and reliable Solaris Operating System, you can create designs and run tests with confidence.

Sun and Mentor Graphics

Mentor Graphics is a technology leader in electronic design automation (EDA), providing software and hardware design solutions that enable companies to develop better electronic products faster and more cost-effectively. Sun and Mentor Graphics have worked together for more than 15 years, continuously nurturing a multifaceted relationship that ultimately results in better products from both companies. There's no greater testimony to a relationship than running your business on a partner's solutions. Mentor Graphics uses Sun SPARC and x64 systems for product development and SPARC systems to run SAP applications. Sun uses Mentor Graphics Calibre physical verification and Design for Test solutions to design integrated and printed circuits for several of its product lines. This symbiotic relationship creates a tightly knit quality and feature improvement feedback loop that strengthens the offerings of both companies.

Stable, Reliable Solaris Operating System

One of greatest values of Sun for Mentor is the proven stability and reliability of the Solaris OS. Over the years, Sun has continued to innovate and improve the performance of the Solaris OS, while providing lifecycle compatibility. "When Sun releases a new version of Solaris, our products just run on it." says Martin Gennery, Director, Divisional Support, Mentor Graphics. The fact that applications run unmodified from release to release on the Solaris OS is very important to Mentor Graphics from a quality point of view, but also means you can upgrade to the latest release of the OS, without worrying that your applications might break.

Mentor Graphics Supports Solaris OS on x64 Systems

Now you can get the same stability and reliability running Mentor Graphics on x64 systems. Mentor Graphics supports the Solaris OS on x64 systems for many of their solutions, enabling you to take advantage of the price/performance of x64 platforms. Solaris 10 brings better reliability and stability to the x64 marketplace, providing performance on x64 in a better overall package. The stability of the Solaris 10 OS has proven valuable to Mentor Graphics engineers who experience fewer reboots and less overall downtime when using the OS.

Creating Better Products

Mentor Graphics actively participates in Sun beta programs for hardware, OS, and developer tools, and provides input to product groups such as Sun Grid Engine. The ability to test on beta versions and have access to Sun engineering and R & D helps Mentor Graphics design software to take advantage of innovative hardware and software features. Mentor Graphics finds access to software tools beta programs very helpful. The company is intimately aware that better tools create better products, so the opportunity to help drive innovation in Sun developer tools is advantageous for both companies. "Sun's developer tools are robust and their early access and beta programs provide us with the broadest depth of access to hardware and software platforms" says Martin Gennery. The beta programs also enable Mentor Graphics to verify compatibility and performance on new platforms, so their customers can confidently upgrade to new versions of the OS and hardware.

Mentor Graphics Wins With Sun Grid Engine

Accelerating time to market and improving product quality are key goals for Mentor Graphics. Before a new product or version can be released, it must undergo thousands of tests, and the faster these tests complete, the faster the product can reach the marketplace. Faced with shrinking budgets and increasing demand for compute power, Mentor Graphics decided to try the open source version of Sun Grid Engine, and then migrated to a licensed and supported version.

Sun Grid Engine 6

Sun Grid Engine 6 is deployed at Mentor Graphics worldwide on Solaris, Linux, and Windows operating systems. Some of the systems in the grid are Sun x64 servers. Now, as more capacity is needed to run tests, the Sun Grid Engine finds the necessary resources within the grid. The grid performs more than 13 million jobs per month, resulting in higher quality products and on-time product releases. Sun Grid also improves CPU utilization by over 150 percent, allowing Mentor Graphics to work within limited budgets, as well as limit growth in power, cooling, and space.

Mentor is so convinced of the benefit of grid computing that they provide input to the Sun Grid Engine product group, and are making their products grid friendly so you can realize the same benefits.

Persistent stability, reliability, scalability, and quality. And now more choice than ever. The Solaris OS and Mentor Graphics running on your choice of systems deliver results for your technical computing needs, so you can create tomorrow's electronic products.

Formerly a systems engineer for Sun, Kat Rollin now reports on partner solutions for sun.com and develops marketing communications for the technology industry.