HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad


There are certainly valid reasons why Universities shouldn't write CAD
tools... and it's hard to disagree with the response why CAD companies
shouldn't either.  Which leads one to wonder what the emphasis really
should be.

Universities teach students how to design circuits.  Students do some
'academic' designs, and go out and do some 'real' designs after graduation.
Universities and industry share information directly and through conferences
to advance the art.

Universities teach students how to write CAD tools.  Students write some
'academic' tools, and go out and send bug reports to CAD companies.
Universities share information on technology with users while CAD companies
are busy reading the bug reports and getting the next release out.

What is wrong with this picture?  One thing is that there are very few
CAD "tools".  They are so-called "systems" which to me implies they are
large, inflexible and unfortunately have defects in proportion to price.
Tools, on the other hand are small, flexible, and probably also have
defects in proportion to price.

The present state of the CAD world has made it difficult to create tools,
so Universities are not writing many anyway, nor is industry.

But, engineers being creative creatures will probably change the model
some day for the better.

Dick "you can pound in a screw with a hammer, if necessary" Dowell
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
From: fred@wuee1.wustl.edu (Fred U. Rosenberger)
Subject: Looking for introductory Magic document: "Learn Magic"
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis Mo.
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 16:59:55 GMT


I had a postscript file of a report titled approximately "Learn Magic"
which had a good introductory explanation of MAGIC long and short commands.
I've lost or misplaced my copy.  Can anyone help with a pointer to the 
source or with a copy of the document (almost any form would be ok).

Fred

Fred U. Rosenberger                fred@wuhydra.wustl.EDU
Biomedical Computer Laboratory     Voice: (314) 362-3124
Washington University              Fax (e-mail preferred): (314) 362-5872
700 S. Euclid Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63110
From: michel@es.ele.tue.nl (Michel Berkelaar iopic)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
Subject: addresses of CAD vendors needed
Date: 12 Oct 92 15:31:16 GMT
Organization: none

I'm looking for the postal addresses of the following companies:

Lattice Logic

Motorola in Austin (Texas)

Exemplar Logic in Berkeley (CA)

Cyrus Logic

HAL in San Jose (CA)

Intel in St. Clara (CA)

Cadence in St. Clara (CA)

DEC research Labs somewhere in Massachussetts

These are hard to find out here in the Netherlands. Please reply by email, I
don't think this is of general interest. On request, I will summarize on the
net.

--
Michel Berkelaar                   | Email: michel@es.ele.tue.nl
Eindhoven University of Technology |
Dept. of Electrical Engineering    |
Design Automation Section          |
P.O. Box 513                       | Phone: ... - 31 - 40 - 473345
NL-5600 MB Eindhoven               | Fax:   ... - 31 - 40 - 464527
The Netherlands                    |
From: lazzaro@boom.CS.Berkeley.EDU (John Lazzaro)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
Subject: Re: Why universities shouldn't write IC CAD tools
Date: 8 Oct 1992 22:06:48 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Distribution: inet
NNTP-Posting-Host: boom.cs.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Oct8.190248.20655@ccu.umanitoba.ca> meier@ee.umanitoba.ca (Martin Meier) writes:
>           Why universities shouldn't write IC CAD tools:
>      [long set of arguments deleted, posted in comp.lsi.cad]

CAD tool users tend to vote with their feet, in my experience. I'm
primarily a chip designer who also does minimal maintainence on a
academic-born ECAD toolset that is available via ftp, and if no one
uses the tools, then why is my mailbox filled daily with messages asking
for support, new features, and sending me bug fixes? If there wasn't a
place for these tools in the world, no one would send any mail; they
would set up the tools, decide they suck, and delete them for disk
space, leaving me alone to read usenet in my spare time instead of fix
bugs :-).

And the tools I maintain have a pretty small audience compared with
something like Magic or IRSIM ...
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
From: pas@jupitercmc.ca (Peter Stokes)
Subject: Re: Why universities SHOULD write IC CAD tools
Reply-To: pas@jupiter.ic.cmc.ca
Organization: Canadian Microelectronics Corporation
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 20:35:26 GMT

In article <1992Oct16.131158.8982@eng.ufl.edu>, jon@alpha.ee.ufl.edu (Jon Mellott) writes:
|> In article <1992Oct16.012223.20611@newsgate.sps.mot.com>, wald@alfalfa.sps.mot.com (Steve Wald) writes:
|> |> In article <1992Oct10.182750.574@cube.sublink.org> arrigo@cube.sublink.org writes:
|> |> >Of course my University would have
|> |> >never afforded to buy enough Cadence site licenses for a student lab,
|> |> >and I would have never been exposed to IC design.
|> |> If the Cadence/Mentor/... bean counters had any brains they would give the 
|> |> licenses to student labs for FREE as advertizement/exposure for future 
|> |> designers. This strategy is used succesfully by not a few hardware
|> |> vendors. Why not CAD vendors?!?
|> |> I would've tried hard to get into a commercial design environment that
|> |> included CAD tools I was familiar with... if there had been any such thing
|> |> when I first started engineering (other than SPICE).
|> 
|> The Cadence and Mentor products are available to Universities for a very low 
|> price -- low enough that it shouldn't be a big concern. This does represent 
|> a big change though: only a couple of years ago Cadence would only let 
|> universities have a small subset of their tools at the nominal license fee.
|> Somehow I suspect that the CAD vendors thought that universities would be 
|> able to write expensive CAD tools into their research budgets and that 
|> they would benefit accordingly. Of course, it never happened. 
|> With one seat of a full suite of IC design tools costing $100K+...

Support and training are two issues that can't be ignored however.
It's not reasonable to expect someone to dive into a tool like
that of Cadence without training... and it's not reasonable to 
call Cadence telephone support if you haven't had training.   And
as we all know, telephone support and training privileges are 
expensive.    If an outside organization can be brought into the 
picture which centralizes support and coordinates activities to 
reduce parallel effort amongst many universities, reasonable use of
large CAE tools is easier in this context.   

Peter

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peter A. Stokes ~~~~~~~~ pas@jupiter.ic.cmc.ca ~~~~~~~ (613) 545-2923 ~~~~~
Canadian Microelectronics Corporation ~~~~~~~~~~~ Kingston, Ontario, Canada
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad,comp.sys.sun.misc
From: rll@frieda.mitre.org (Roberto L. Landrau)
Subject: Re: Sun graphics advice needed
Organization: Research Computer Facility, MITRE Corporation, Bedford, MA
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 21:31:31 GMT

In article <1992Oct15.202702.1448@pacdata.uucp> jimh@pacdata.com (Jim Harkins) writes:
>I just found out that one of our managers bought the Viewlogic CAD package
>for a Sun Sparc and now I need to build a color system for it.  My questions
>are legion (all we've got now are black&white), but I have 2-3 biggies.
>As I see it I've got 3 options:
>
>    1) Buy an IPX upgrade from Sun for $5495.  This plugs into an IPC.
>    2) Buy a graphics card from someone else for around $800.
>    3) Buy a color xtube, probably from NCD.  Price is unknown right now, I'm
>       guessing $7,000-$10,000.

Human Designed Systems (HDS) has some X terminals (19" color Trinitron
tubes for just over $3000, I think.  Notice: I am not affiliated with
HDS.  This is the only brand of X-windows terminals with which I am
familiar.  I used to use one every day.

>Options 1 and 2 require me to get a monitor, I can get a 19 inch Sony for 
>$2000 plus shipping.  And now the questions:
>
>    1) Is the IPX upgrade worth the money, or should I just buy a graphics card?
>    2) Any recommendations on third party graphics cards?  A pointer to a
>       magazine review that would give me an overview of what to look for would
>       be great.
>    3) If I went the color X-terminal route would I still need a graphics card
>       in my Sparc?

You don't need to modify the Sparc hardware to add an X-terminal to
your network.

>       Can I just plug an xtube into my ethernet and happily
>       run Openwindows 3.0?

You will probably be running the standard X-server.  It is up to you
to run the window manager of your choice.  Viewlogic will run in a
plain X-server.  The new HDS systems come with built-in Motif and
open-look window managers.  You can run either of them locally (which
reduces network traffic), or any another window manager of your choice
remotely.


--
The opinions stated above are not necessarily my employer's.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Roberto L. Landrau    KC1YP    landrau@mitre.org  rll@linus.mitre.org
The MITRE Corporation  Bedford, MA 01730          rll@linus.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
From: cellis@eng.auburn.edu (Charles Ellis)
Subject: cifp
Keywords: plot,cifp,magic,cad
Reply-To: cellis@eng.auburn.edu
Organization: Auburn University Engineering
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 21:01:11 GMT

I'm having trouble plotting lables with my magic pen plots
using cifp. If you can help please E-mail to cellis@eng.auburn.edu

thanks,
 Charles Ellis


Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
From: ajmontal@eos.ncsu.edu (ANTONIO J MONTALVO)
Subject: SPICE3 on a pc?
Organization: NCSU Project Eos
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 21:10:56 GMT

Has anybody compiled SPICE3e2 (including nutmeg) on dos?
Better yet, has anybody ported it to windows?  If so, making the executables
available would be great.
Thanks,
Tony Montalvo
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
From: wald@alfalfa.sps.mot.com (Steve Wald)
Subject: Re: Why universities SHOULD write IC CAD tools
Summary: just my $.02
Organization: Motorola, Paging and Wireless Data Group
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 01:22:23 GMT

In article <1992Oct10.182750.574@cube.sublink.org> arrigo@cube.sublink.org writes:
>Of course my University would have
>never afforded to buy enough Cadence site licenses for a student lab,
>and I would have never been exposed to IC design.

If the Cadence/Mentor/... bean counters had any brains they would give the 
licenses to student labs for FREE as advertizement/exposure for future 
designers. This strategy is used succesfully by not a few hardware
vendors. Why not CAD vendors?!?

I would've tried hard to get into a commercial design environment that
included CAD tools I was familiar with... if there had been any such thing
when I first started engineering (other than SPICE).
-- 
Steve Wald, Motorola Inc.
wald@borg.sps.mot.com
From: arrigo@cube.sublink.org (Arrigo Benedetti)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.cad
Subject: Why universities SHOULD write IC CAD tools
Date: 10 Oct 92 18:27:50 GMT
Reply-To: arrigo@cube.sublink.org
Organization: Arrigo Benedetti

In article <1992Oct8.190248.20655@ccu.umanitoba.ca> meier@ee.umanitoba.ca  
(Martin Meier) writes:
> 
>            Why universities shouldn't write IC CAD tools:
>  
> 
>[a lot stuff deleted]

This is not true, Universities must keep writing IC CAD tools.
Let me tell you a story. A couple of years ago I took a course on VLSI
design at the University of Bologna. In a semester I designed a fully
functional 4-bit microprocessor from scratch with the Octools. This was
possible because some smart people at UC Berkeley decided to write this
package and give it for a nominal fee. Of course my University would have
never afforded to buy enough Cadence site licenses for a student lab,
and I would have never been exposed to IC design.

You say that code written by EE student is not terse. This is right
in some cases, but not always. IC CAD tools design has evolved rapidly
in the last years, and so did teams writing cad tools. I remember someone
telling me that people in the cad group at Berkeley are more computer
literate than many people doing research in computer science.

Arrigo Benedetti

P.S. flames to /dev/null
-- 
Arrigo Benedetti             e-mail: arrigo@cube.sublink.org (preferred)
University of Bologna                benedett@deis01.cineca.it
undergraduate student (EECS)         
Via S. Agata, 11               Tel:  (home)   +39 59 224929
41100 Modena - Italy                 (office) +39 59 216688 (fax) +39 59 220727
Xref: sparky comp.lsi:630 comp.lsi.cad:1014
From: belhadj@irisa.fr (Mohammed Belhadj,signal)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi,comp.lsi.cad
Subject: Diff Amplifier sizing
Date: 12 Oct 92 07:49:43 GMT
Reply-To: belhadj@irisa.fr
Organization: IRISA, Rennes, France

A freind wishes to get informations or pointers to work done to design Diff. Ampli. for Static Memory in CMOS or NMOS (info like size ...)


Any help will be greatly appreciate.

Thanks

belhadj@irisa.fr
From: iskender@madrone.eecs.ucdavis.edu (Iskender Agi)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi
Subject: SRAM info
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:10:10 GMT
Organization: Division of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Davis

I am looking for large SRAMs with 4-, 8-bit or higher data I/O,
such as 256k by 4 or 128k by 4.  Does anyone know of such a beast?
Who makes it?  How fast is it?  And how is it packaged?

			Thanks in advance,
			-Iskender
Xref: sparky comp.lsi:639 comp.lsi.cad:1032
From: pi@sharon.isi.edu (Jen-I Pi)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi,comp.lsi.cad
Subject: Re: Magic: SPICE deck for GaAs circuits using ext2spice
Date: 15 Oct 92 08:01:46 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: MOSIS Project, USC/ISI

In article <71110@hydra.gatech.EDU>, gt3384c@prism.gatech.EDU (AUSTIN,BLANCA) writes:
|> I have been trying to generate the SPICE deck for some GaAs circuits
|> layed out using Magic. I had previously posted here and had been adviced
|> to use ext2spice instead of sim2spice. However, I am having problems with
|> the deck that ext2spice generates. Here are some of my problems:
|> 
|> 1. The devices generated are MOSFETs and mot MESFETs.
|>    What should I do? Just change the device line to correspond to
|>    the MESFET line?
|> 2. Capacitance values are too large. 
|> 3. Schottky diodes appear as MOSFETs with their drain and source tied together.
|> 
|> If I have to change the generated file so much for it to describe
|> my circuit, what is the advantage of using ext2spice over generating the
|> deck manually?

You need a special version of 'sim2spice' from UCSB to be able to extract
MESFET and capacitance correctly. The original version needs utilities
from Berkeley's original 1986 distribution tape for magic version4.X.
You will have problem compiling it if you have the version 6.X.

We have a revised version that goes with version6. It is avialable from
our anonymous FTP host "venera.isi.edu" (128.9.0.32) under pub/mosis/magic
directory. The file you need is "gaas_extract.tar.Z".

Assuming a inv.ext file exist, the procedure to use 'sim2spice' is

    ext2sim inv
    sim2spice inv.sim

Here's the resulting SPICE decks for SPICE3e...

SPICE 3 Deck created from inv.sim, tech=edgaas
*
z2 3 4 2 efet1.2 2.8
C3 3 0    0.485F
C4 4 0    1.062F
z1 1 4 3 dfet1.2 2.8
*

Hope this helps,

Jen-I pi@isi.edu :-)
MOSIS Project, USC/ISI
(310)8221511 x640
Newsgroups: comp.lsi
From: sls@elecard.tomsk.su (Sergey Shinkevich)
Subject: WANTED BrookTree EMail adress
Keywords: BrookTree
Reply-To: sls@elecard.tomsk.su
Organization: Elecard ltd hq
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 13:43:37 +0700

Dear netters,

Could you please send me Internet (or Compu$erve) adress of Brooktree Co.

Please send it directly to this adress, NOT in this group.

Thank you very much in advance.

Sergey Shinkevich.
sls@elecard.tomsk.su




Xref: sparky comp.lsi:635 comp.lsi.cad:1022
From: shmz@jupiter.ee.sophia.ac.jp (Naohiko Shimizu)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi,comp.lsi.cad
Subject: Re: Spice3e2 and X11R5
Date: 13 Oct 92 05:43:42 GMT
Organization: Electrical Electronic Engineering Dept., Sophia Univ., Tokyo,
	Japan

Hello,

>Has anybody ever compiled Spice3e2 (assuming this is the latest from Berkeley)
>under X11R5 environment. When I do, the linker complains that it has an
>undefined symbols asciiStringWidgetClass (which I presume is from Xaw).

I compiled Spice3e2 under X11R5, I had same problem but I changed the class
to asciiTextWidgetClass and I could compile the code.
I don't know the differences between the asciiStringWidgetClass and 
the asciiTextWidgetClass but it seems work without problems.

--
					Naohiko Shimizu
					shmz@mamoru.ee.sophia.ac.jp
Xref: sparky comp.lsi.testing:244 comp.lsi:625
From: kumarv@cricket.asd.sgi.com (Kumar Venkat)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing,comp.lsi
Subject: Deadline Extended for VLSI Test Symposium
Date: 7 Oct 92 22:41:08 GMT
Reply-To: kumarv@cricket.asd.sgi.com (Kumar Venkat)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: cricket.asd.sgi.com


I have been asked by Dr. Dhiraj Pradhan to post this item.

The deadline for submission of paper proposals (full papers
or extended summary) for the 11th IEEE VLSI Test Symposium
has been extended until October 16, 1992. This is a week 
later than the original deadline.

For more information, please contact:

	Dr. Dhiraj Pradhan

	(409) 862-2438
	pradhan@cs.tamu.edu


------------------------------------------------------------


Kumar Venkat
Silicon Graphics
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing
From: hllo@Uz.nthu.edu.tw (Huan-Lun Lo (PME G813752) TEL.(035)715131-4945)
Subject: test 1
Organization: National Tsing Hua University (HsinChu)
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 08:37:52 GMT


Xref: sparky comp.lsi.testing:247 comp.lsi.cad:1019
From: gt3384c@prism.gatech.EDU (AUSTIN,BLANCA)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing,comp.lsi.cad
Subject: Magic question: Using ext2spice for GaAs circuits
Date: 12 Oct 92 20:04:12 GMT
Followup-To: comp.lsi.testing
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

Hi,

I'm having a problem with using ext2spice to generate the
SPICE deck for magic layouts. It gives me MOSFETs instead of
MESFETs, the capacitances are way too large, and Schottky diodes
are treated as FETs with the drain and source tied up together.

Is their a special flag I need to use to generate the correct
SPICE deck? or, should I just modified the deck to represent the 
correct circuit? If the later is true,  why would this be any better
than just generating the deck by hand?

Thanks,
Blanca

-- 
Blanca L. Austin
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{allegra,rutgers,bellcore}!gatech!prism!gt3384c
ARPA: gt3384c@prism.gatech.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing
Subject: Re: test
From: michele@deis24.cineca.it (Michele Favalli)
Date: 13 Oct 92 18:39:37 +0100
Distribution: world
Organization: Dept. of Electronics, Computer Science & Systems, Univ. of Bologna, Italy


I was at ITC, one of the most important issues in this conferences is the 
presence of a few papers presenting failure analysis data collected on  
samples of chips that are meaningful from a statistical point of view. 

Michele Favalli

============================================================================== 

Michele Favalli 
DEIS - University of Bologna                 tel. 39-51-644-3082 
Viale Risorgimento 2                         fax. 39-51-644-3073
40136 Bologna - ITALY                        e-mail: michele@deis16.cineca.it 

==============================================================================
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing,comp.lsi
From: adkins@mckinley.eng.ohio-state.edu (Kenneth C. Adkins)
Subject: DAS 9200 question
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Electrical Engineering
Distribution: usa
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 21:37:34 GMT

Has/does anyone out there ever used a Tektronix DAS 9200 for data
acquisition and generation?  Is there a way to store acquired data to
disk?  The manuals don't seem to make any mention of this (lack of a)
feature. 

Thanks,
Ken
-- 
                                            ____________
Kenneth C. Adkins                          /           /  
               -------8888888888===========------------ 
adkins@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu               \___________\
From: black@mpd.tandem.com (David C. Black)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing
Subject: Re: test
Date: 14 Oct 92 13:41:18 GMT
Reply-To: black@io.UUCP (David C. Black)
Organization: /etc/organization

In article <1992Oct13.183938.567@cine88.cineca.it> michele@deis24.cineca.it
(Michele Favalli) writes:
>
>I was at ITC, one of the most important issues in this conferences is the 
>presence of a few papers presenting failure analysis data collected on  
>samples of chips that are meaningful from a statistical point of view. 
>
>Michele Favalli

Would you care to elaborate on the types of chips and failures reported?
Perhaps give a reference or two?  I would be interested in ordering a
copy of the papers if available.
-- 
| David C. Black                  Electrical Engineer (hardware/software)|
| Tandem Computers Incorporated   Guardian: SMTPGATE@AUSTIN(black@tzone) |
| 14231 Tandem Blvd.              Internet: black@mpd.tandem.com         |
|_Austin, Texas 78728-6699________Phone: 512/244-8321__FAX_512/244-8247__|
From: larrabee@cse.ucsc.edu (Tracy Larrabee)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing
Subject: Re: test
Date: 7 Oct 92 16:30:29 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz (CE/CIS Boards)
NNTP-Posting-Host: arapaho.ucsc.edu


This makes three test messages from taiwan from three separate people in
the first half of this week.  This sounds like a dangerous trend.  Anyone
who actually works on IC test in taiwan who can figure out how to communicate
to these people that this is an inappropriate use of our newsgroup could
become our personal hero.

As it is, each person can learn that he or she acted inappropriately, but 
something is giving the idea to post here to multiple people at the same
site.

Just to insert something on testing, speaking as someone who was unable to
attend ITC this year because of administrative obligations, I would love
to know what the hallway-scuttlebut said were the most exciting papers.  I
have access to the proceedings, but it is a thick book.  I missed hearing 
people chat in the hallways about "so-and-so's outrageous talk" or
"what's his name's new insight." 

I think the volume on this group is low enough that just posting opinions
would be of most value, but feel free to send me mail.
--
Tracy Larrabee		larrabee@cse.ucsc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing
From: sjlia@Uz.nthu.edu.tw (S.J.Lia)
Subject: test
Organization: National Tsing Hua University (HsinChu)
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 12:08:14 GMT


fjdfdfj
From: oblivion@sioux.ucs.indiana.edu (oblivion)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing
Subject: Feedback diagnostics
Date: 8 Oct 92 17:34:15 GMT
Organization: Indiana University

I would like any help at all on this and plan to be at it for awhile.

Jeff Singleton (Naval Surface Warfare Center, Module Testing)
jrs594@dice.nwscc.sea06.navy.mil
Newsgroups: comp.lsi.testing