gld@CUNIXD.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Gary L Dare) (04/22/89)
Would readers care to share their opinions on some of the CAD tools
offered (or once offered) by universities? The obvious ones that come
to mind are:
1. Magic
2. Vivid
3. Caesar
All three of these are in wide use, but their development has been
discontinued.
Also, there is a new program from Berkeley called OCT; does anyone
have any experience with it that they'd care to share?
gld
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gary L. Dare > gld@eevlsi.ee.columbia.EDU
> gld@cunixd.cc.columbia.EDU
"SLAINTE MHATH!" > gld@cunixc.BITNETmarco@buengc.BU.EDU (Marco Zelada) (04/23/89)
In article <8904211724.AA08448@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu> gld@CUNIXD.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Gary L Dare) writes: >Would readers care to share their opinions on some of the CAD tools >offered (or once offered) by universities? The obvious ones that come >to mind are: > >1. Magic >2. Vivid >3. Caesar > >All three of these are in wide use, but their development has been >discontinued. > >Also, there is a new program from Berkeley called OCT; does anyone >have any experience with it that they'd care to share? > >gld I think that it all depends on what you want to do with the tool. As teaching tools, I would say that Magic and Vivid have their days counted. As far as Caesar, I never used it but I used Kic which is similar, I think that no matter how good tools get, simple mask level editors such as these will always exist and be used. Oct is not a program, it is a collection of tools that together make for a good design environment. The little experience I have had with the Oct tools tells me that it should be the teaching tool of choice in conduction with much simpler packages such as Kic. I think that the VLSI training should have the following levels and the proper tools at each level: 1) VLSI Circuit & System - How to design VLSI circuits from specs, concentrating mostly on circuit and device aspects. VLSI Circuit and System Design courses should expose the students to low level mask editing, for it is the only way that they will learn what it all means. I would compare this to having to learn at least one kind of ASM in most C.S. programs, this is regardless of how good high level languages have become, it is still in their best interest to learn it first so that they can go on to bigger and better things. 2) VLSI Testing - How to design VLSI circuits that can be properly tested and characterized. In VLSI Testing courses the students should have tools that can help in developing good test vector sets depending on the types of coverage needed and to allow to experiment with the different testability techniques. Such tools are partially available from different sources. 3) VLSI Technology - How to design VLSI fabrication technologies and what is involved in the development of different processes. Sorry but I do not know much about any tools in this area other than a process modeling package from CMU. 4) VLSI Architecture - How to design VLSI Chips taking into account all of the architectural and testability issues. In VLSI Architecture courses, one should assume that the students already have enough VLSI background and are more interested in experimenting with new ideas related with the chip floorplan, signal and utility bus routing, etc.. At this level one would better use more automated tools to avoid the little details that are no longer interesting. I would use tool sets such as Oct and Vem, or VNPR ( place and route ), etc to be able to experiment with more immediate results. 5) VLSI Design Automation - How to design VLSI CAD tools to help in all of the different levels of VLSI design, with a concentration on the implementation of tools. This is the place where students should get a chance to improve on existing tools or creating news ones. 6) Any other more abstract related courses that can build on the above. I know that there are many schools out there that have this type of outline for their VLSI courses, however, I know that there are also some schools that try to do too much in one course and are employing the wrong types of tools. I would like to see an undergraduate specialization in VLSI as an option for Computer Engineering/Science students. Any takers ? Sorry if it ended up being abit long, but I could not help it. -- ________________________________________________________________________________ Name: Marco Zelada Phone: 617 353 9882, Fax: 353 6322 VLSI CAD Engineer E-mail: marco@buengc.bu.edu Dept: Electrical & Computer Eng. Mail: 44 Cummington St. Room 236 Org: Boston University Boston MA, 02215 ________________________________________________________________________________
Strubin@apple.com (Steven Rubin) (04/25/89)
Your posting lists three familiar IC CAD systems (Caesar, Magic, and
Vivid) and asks for comment.
By way of comment, allow me to introduce a fourth: Electric.
Electric is primarily an IC design system that can handle nMOS, CMOS
(has MOSIS design rules), bipolar, etc. It also handles schematic
capture, printed circuit design, and other esoteric design styles
(a technology editor allows you to roll your own).
Unlike Magic and Caesar which view circuitry simply as polygons on
various layers, Electric views circuitry as components and connecting
wires. Unlike Vivid, these objects are not symbolic or "virtual grid"
but appear in their true geometry.
Electric packages a number of tools into one uniform system. There
is an online DRC, many simulation interfaces (SPICE, ESIM, RSIM, RNL,
COSMOS, MOSSIM, VERILOG, CADAT, Abel PAL), a compactor, two PLA generators,
three routers, network consistency checking, and a VHDL generator that
can place and route a standard cell library from a structural VHDL
description.
Of particular interest to faculty members is the accompanying textbook,
"Computer Aids for VLSI Design" by Steven M. Rubin (yes, me) and part
of the Addison-Wesley VLSI series. This book surveys electrical CAD
tools and uses Electric as a demonstration vehicle. Combined with the
source code and internals documentation, one has a complete curriculum
for CAD tool construction.
Electric is written in C and so it runs on a large variety of computers.
Currently, there are interfaces available for the SUN, Apollo, VAX
(UNIX and VMS), Macintosh, and all X Window System machines (both X.10
and X.11).
Electric has been in university distribution for nearly six years.
It was originally developed by me at Schlumberger, but now it is
available from Electric Editor, Incorporated. Universities can obtain
it through the normal path (sign the license agreement, pay the nominal
tape fee, get the source tape, go nuts). The creation of Electric
Editor, Inc. now means that commercial customers can also sign up and
receive supported code (source or object).
-Steven Rubin (strubin@apple.com)
Apple Computerssave@caen.engin.umich.edu (Shailendra Anant Save) (05/04/89)
From article <8904211724.AA08448@cunixd.cc.columbia.edu>, by gld@CUNIXD.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Gary L Dare): > Would readers care to share their opinions on some of the CAD tools > offered (or once offered) by universities? The obvious ones that come > to mind are: > > 1. Magic > 2. Vivid > 3. Caesar > > All three of these are in wide use, but their development has been > discontinued. > > Also, there is a new program from Berkeley called OCT; does anyone > have any experience with it that they'd care to share? > > gld > -- > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Gary L. Dare > gld@eevlsi.ee.columbia.EDU > > gld@cunixd.cc.columbia.EDU > "SLAINTE MHATH!" > gld@cunixc.BITNET Hi -- This would not be considered to be a followup of the article but I just thought that it would be closest to what I had to ask. Is there anyone out there who is using the Seattle Silicon Compilers as their CAD tools? I am using them and am having quite a few problems with them. I would like to know if any of these problems are universal or if they are due to the environment which I am working in. We typically have about a 100 workstations that can use them simultaneously and I keep getting errors of "unable to open file XXXX" etc. Please mail me over this net so that, I expect, others will also have the opportunity to have a look at what problems the new generation compilers are facing. Shailendra ------- :) (ssave@caen.engin.umich.edu)