bakken@fluke.UUCP (Greg Bakken) (08/01/85)
If you have been following the developments behind EDIF (Electronic Design
Interchange Format), what are your comments so far? It seems to me that EDIF
just may become a viable CAE/CAD/CAM standard within a year or so, but this, of
course, remains to be seen. Do you feel that the EDIF people have approached
the task at hand relatively well so far? Do you think that EDIF will become a
standard? If not, will IGES (Initial Graphics Exchange Specification) or VHDL
(VHSIC Hardware Description Language)? If EDIF will become a standard, what
does it have over these other two candidates that will cause it to win out
eventually?
For those who have not heard of EDIF before, it is an 18 month old effort to
allow interchange of such information as connectivity, topography, components,
and test vectors. EDIF is basicly a "Lisp-like" data structure, although it is
possible that executable parts may be added in the future. The EDIF group is
not presently attached to any standards organization but is looking into this
possibility. The steering committee consists of members from Daisy Systems,
Mentor Graphics, Motorola, National Semiconductor, Tektronix, and Texas
Instruments. It is picking up support fairly quickly, especially among CAD and
CAE vendors. One firm (Inacom International, Denver, (800) 443-INFO) is
selling a component library called Cache, which is in EDIF format.
Given sufficient response, I will post a summary of comments.
Greg Bakken
John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc.;PO Box C9090;MS 269D;Everett WA 98206;(206) 356-6298
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