Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!intelca!mipos3!td2cad!cpocd2!howard
From: howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman)
Newsgroups: comp.lsi
Subject: Re: schematic interchange format
Message-ID: <1214@cpocd2.UUCP>
Date: 29 Mar 88 17:37:49 GMT
References: <8803091159.AA00803@knapp.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: howard@cpocd2.UUCP (Howard A. Landman)
Organization: Intel Corp. ASIC Systems Organization, Chandler AZ
Lines: 35

In article <8803091159.AA00803@knapp.cs.uiuc.edu> knapp@KNAPP.CS.UIUC.EDU (David Knapp) writes:
>If we need a standard interchange format, what is wrong with EDIF except
>possibly that it-is-too-complicated-and-besides-we-don't-need-all-that?

Exactly.

>Never mind. A standard that nobody uses, for whatever reason, is about as
>useful as King Tut's standards for coffin nails. If nobody wants to use
>EDIF then we must simply sigh and develop something else.

True, but if you're saying that no one uses EDIF then you are mistaken.
It takes time to develop software, so the results are just starting to
become visible, but most major CAD vendors and many "foundries" have been
working on EDIF for a year or more.

At ICCAD in November, two workstation vendors (Valid and Daisy?) showed
total portability of schematics from one vendors platform to the other,
using EDIF as the intermediate format.

>1. screen layout information. That is, positions of symbols, text, and
>   "routing". This would be addressed by dumping bit maps, but:

>2. we also should include circuit information so that we don't have to
>   run an extractor on the diagram to recover the circuit topology. This
>   means information like the SPICE deck, which unfortunately does not
>   include any display layout information.

This is why schematic information (which contains both circuit topology, and
screen presentation) is so useful.  Mere graphics languages, even great ones
like PostScript, will never meet this need.

-- 
	Howard A. Landman
	{oliveb,hplabs}!intelca!mipos3!cpocd2!howard
	howard%cpocd2.intel.com@RELAY.CS.NET