( SNUG 01 Item 25 ) -------------------------------------------- [ 3/28/01 ]
Subject: Loving Synopsys LINUX, Cadence LINUX, & Synopsys 64-bit
BY POPULAR DEMAND: Last year customers pestered Aart about busting DC out
of its 32-bit limit. He promised then that it would happen, and at this
year SNUG'01 he pretty much said 64-bit was practically here (give or take
a month or so.) The first on the 64-bit train was PrimeTime because of its
memory chowing nature. PrimeTime 64-bit has been out for a while. Second
to go 64 will be DC. (A lot of people are now extra interested in this
since Steve Golson's paper benchmarking 7 different ways to synthesize a
design.) I'm told that 64-bit DC is in beta and when it's released it'll
be on both Sun and HP workstations. Also 64-bit DC will not be on the
Synopsys 2000.11-SP1 service pack released this month.
The other popular demand on Synopsys is to port to LINUX. Two years ago
at SNUG'99 they announced porting VCS to LINUX as a trial ballon. Now at
this year's SNUG, Synopsys said it's porting all its major tools over to
LINUX. And a month later, Cadence jumped in saying it would now port just
its simulators over to LINUX. ( Goering's "VCS goes LINUX" is at
http://www.eetimes.com/story/design/eda_news/OEG19990329S0014 from two
years ago, and Santarini's Cadence "Me, Too!" for LINUX support simulators
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000417S0090 from last week. ) The LINUX
ports are in the Synopsys 2000.11-SP1 service pack released this month.
"Our data says that 12.2% of EDA users will be shifting to LINUX
this year. That's a big shift! 5% is a big number for this
metric. How many times have you changed you OS?"
- Gary Smith, Senior EDA Analyst of DataQuest
"6) The Penguin is coming!
Linux is growing. Most Synopsys tools are available on Linux, and
people are using it for real chip development, apparently with very
good results. SGI's booth at the vendor fair featured a multiprocessor
Pentium machine running Linux."
- Paul Zimmer of Cisco
"Our benchmark results finally made it to our public web site:
http://www.sgi.com/manufacturing/eda/linux/performance.html"
- Tony Laundrie of SGI
"I've got a question for you: Both Sun and SGI were showing server
farms for simulation purposes. One uses Sun hardware, the other
PC hardware (runing LINUX). Both claimed the other's product cost
$250K plus but their own was about $100K. Soooo, who's telling
porkies?"
- Chris Byham of Philips Semiconductors
"We are pleased to announce the Synopsys 2000.11 release for the Linux
platform. The release introduces the following products:
BSD Compiler
DC Ultra
Design Analyzer
Design Compiler
DesignWare Developer
DesignWare Foundation & Core Library
DFT Compiler
Floorplan Manager
Library Compiler
Module Compiler
Power Compiler
PrimeTime
HDL Compiler for Verilog
VHDL Compiler
The 2000.11 Linux release is available electronically and accessible
using the SOLV-IT."
- a Synopsys "Dear Customer" letter of 2/16/01
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