johnw@astroatc.UUCP (John F. Wardale) (08/25/88)
I've been forwarding lsi.cad to a freind at Honeywell.
He sent the following reply to the article describing the
MIPSco 25Mhz parts:
From uwvax!cim-vax.honeywell.com!ANIMAL::JHILDEBRAND Sun Aug 21 18:30:20 1988
I noticed a posting in the latest batch about a company (MIPS) needed
hand layout to get a chip that ran at 25Mhz. As it turns out, a year
and a half ago, I and another engineer with 2 techs (=1 full eng) layed
out a 32 bit microprocessor that ran at 25Mhz over full military temp
(25c to 125c) with a simple standard cell layout tool. The SC's were
layed out by hand. Macroblocks (or megacells) were layed out some by
hand and some with the SC tools. The chip was layed out with the SC
tools. We then did analysis, found those paths that didn't make timing,
ran 3 or 4 iterations with performance biasing nets, and fixed up those
paths that still didn't work by hand. This was 3 engineers working
1.5 years plus some management and other support. SO, it was estimated
as a 5 man year task. Not near the 25 man year for MIPS. Unfortunately,
the chip was done for the Military who no longer has any money to buy
it............
jrah (Jeff R. A. Hildebrand)
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John W:
In defense of MIPSco, all clocks are not equal. I'm sure the MIPSco
parts to more than the Honeywell chip, for one fifth the effort, I
think this says a LOT for what CAD tools can do!!!!!!
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Reply to me or JRAH...I'll forward...the DECNET link to his machine is
flaky....
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--
John Wardale
... {seismo | harvard | ihnp4} ! {uwvax | cs.wisc.edu} ! astroatc!johnw
To err is human, to really foul up world news requires the net!