12 Dec
2006
12 Dec
'06
11:51 a.m.
Did anyone salvage any of the very expensive hardware
simulators of
the mid 80's?
Mentor and Valid both had systems which could integrate actual parts
into a software simulation (Valid's was called RealChip).
The largest of these sorts of things were seas of Xilix FPGAs that
attemtpted to simulate entire designs. The software wasn't very good,
and while they simulated the design a few orders of magnitude faster
than software simulators, they still were not very fast. One of these
showed up at BDI this past year, with absolutely no interest from bidders.
I worked on MacOS bootstrapping of both the G3 at Somerset and the
Exponential BiCMOS processors on those.
12 Dec
12 Dec
12:13 p.m.
On 12 Dec 2006 at 8:51, Al Kossow wrote:
Mentor and Valid both had systems which could
integrate actual parts
into a software simulation (Valid's was called RealChip).
ZyCAD was the one I was trying to remember. A friend went to work
there swearing that it was "the way of the future". One of those
technological dead-ends, I guess. Flash in the pan.
Cheers,
Chuck
12:52 p.m.
At 10:24 PM -0700 12/11/06, Richard wrote:
What about the design software? I imagine the first
generation of EDA
software was created in-house by pioneers of VLSI design. But what
about when the tools started to become commodities? What about early
releases of software from a company like Mentor Graphics?
Have you seen the prices of just a single seat of that kind of
software? Plus they require license servers for the software to
work. It doesn't matter if you have the software without the
licenses the stuff won't run, and both tend to be highly guarded.
Also a lot of in-house software is still used. This isn't the kind
of thing that finds its way out of the companies that use/write it.
At 9:13 AM -0800 12/12/06, Chuck Guzis wrote:
ZyCAD was the one I was trying to remember. A friend
went to work
there swearing that it was "the way of the future". One of those
technological dead-ends, I guess. Flash in the pan.
That's the one I was thinking of. I helped support a bunch of the
boxes nearly 10 years ago. Rather fragile frightening boxes as I
recall. After Zycad went under we kept them alive for a short time
via cannibalization until we could get everything moved off of them.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
1:22 p.m.
In article <a06200711c1a499460715(a)[192.168.1.199]>9]>,
"Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> writes:
At 10:24 PM -0700 12/11/06, Richard wrote:
Yes, but I hadn't thought about licensing, that's a good point.
I wonder if these companies even keep around a piece of their history
or if its lost forever?
--
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What about the design software? I imagine the
first generation of EDA
software was created in-house by pioneers of VLSI design. But what
about when the tools started to become commodities? What about early
releases of software from a company like Mentor Graphics?
Have you seen the prices of just a single seat of that kind of
software?
13 Dec
13 Dec
11 a.m.
At 11:22 AM -0700 12/12/06, Richard wrote:
In article
<a06200711c1a499460715(a)[192.168.1.199]>9]>,
"Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> writes:
It depends on a lot of factors.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
Have you seen the prices of just a single seat
of that kind of
software?
Yes, but I hadn't thought about licensing, that's a good point.
I wonder if these companies even keep around a piece of their history
or if its lost forever?
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6413
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