Maybe a cloud provider that has an image you pay for? I currently leverage this sort of thing in Amazon EC2 with the Xilinx Vivado 2019.2 AMI. The question is: Does anyone know if there are ways to lease floating node licenses for tools such as QuestaSim, Xcelium, Incisive, or VCS? Something along the lines of an hourly agreement for usage of a seat? My thought was being able to VPN to an LM server, check out a license to run said EDA tool, and then release license once complete. I am aware of, but aside from the issue of not wanting to upload heaps of proprietary IP to their server, it seems like a pretty blatant abuse of the service. So paying the premium for a license only to find out that it doesn't work, or doesn't end up helping me troubleshoot the design, would be a real kick in the pants. There's also the issue of not knowing if the fancy EDA tools will even get me to where I need to be. Additionally, I don't currently need three months worth of license (at least I don't expect to).
Especially given the financial impact of the global pandemic eating into my expected budget. I've priced out the options and even the shortest term license (generally three months) is a really tough pill to swallow.
#CADENCE FPGA SIMULATION TRIAL#
I have no idea if using the simulation tools will aid in my work, but I'm at a point where the schedule is becoming really tight, and it's time to try the simulation tools vs trial and error builds using the FPGA hardware. The simulation sources that shipped with the HDL design do not work in any open source sim (Xilinx XSim, Icarus Verilog, or Verilator). I have a rather large HDL design that does have simulation files, but they must be run with Cadence Xcelium (maybe Incisive would work?) or Synopsys VCS. I am in a situation where I think I need a big boy simulation tool.