Apple and NVIDIA are using Allegro (or customized versions thereof.)
> or even better
KiCad is faster, absolutely not better.
> very expensive
Vivado is free for a great number of devices (not just the "lite" version, either, depending on the board - U50, U55, etc.)
No open source tooling can even remotely compare in ASIC implementation flow or FPGA implementation.
That seems like a matter of taste. We switched from Altium to KiCad and I very much prefer it. We don't do any RF stuff, so there might be things that don't quite work in KiCad, but for what we do - power electronics - it works perfectly well.
I modified some its hard to reuse them in other designs. They get saved in places with lots of extra files and I'm not sure how to merge with other designs.
Not what I've heard, and CERN seems to think it's good enough for their particle colliders.
>No open source tooling can even remotely compare in ASIC implementation flow or FPGA implementation.
Yes, FPGA tools are a very different matter. I do wonder if this is really lock-in from vendors more than any preference by users, but still, sufficiently motivated users could reverse-engineer things to try to make a single open-source toolset that works with all vendors' FPGAs. Of course, the feasibility of this is questionable, but we've seen really impressive reverse-engineering efforts in other places in FOSS. Just look at how futile it is for YouTube to try to prevent people from downloading their videos.
https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/cern-selects-cadence-service...
"The CERN physics department is deploying the Cadence analog and digital end-to-end solutions as well as the Cadence verification and Allegro PCB solutions throughout the support of its CERN IT department."
They also have a service contract with KiCad Services Corporation. [2]
[1] https://ohwr.org/project/macbeth [2] https://cernandsocietyfoundation.cern/news/significant-miles...