No Subject

[jfox@xxxxxxxxxx (Jeff Fox)]

Dear MISC readers,

On Mon, 29 May 1995, Penio wrote:

>I believe Chuck is doing the simulations on a MuP21 board. If this is
>true, we have the same program (OKAD), written by the same programmer
>(Chuck) on two different systems -- i486 and MuP21 based. 
>
>Are there any comparisons for the time to do the same job on both systems? 
>
>--
>Penio Penev <Penev@venezia.Rockefeller.edu> 1-212-327-7423

Chuck is still using the OKAD on the 486.  He has not taken the time
off from laying out chips, and working with clients to move all of OKAD
to the P21.  The port of OK is not even complete.  On the 486 OK includes
a screen editor, a character set editor, a hex editor, and a hook to OKAD.
OKAD includes layout display, layout edit, instruction edit, simulate, etc.
On the P21 all Chuck implemented in OK was the menus, a hex editor, and
a hook to OKAD.  All that was done with P21 OKAD was tile display.
Chuck has not taken the time to port the rest of the tools and the
simulator etc.

So there are only a few functions that can be compared.  The most
interesting would be the net extraction, but that has not yet been
done.

On one of the versions of OK there was a tile display of the P21
chip design where you could move through the layers and scroll around
on the chip.  

I have not done any real benchmarks on these functions.  They are too
fast to get good timing.  There seems to be a range from about the
same speed to several times faster, but I have not benched.  As I
say the net extraction or rule checks would be better since they take
quite a while to run.  But this code has not yet been ported.

It is likely that Chuck will not get around to a port to one of his
chips for a while.  It is hard to say.  I think Chuck would prefer to
deal with chip layout first, then programming, and finally clients.
But funding puts clients and layout at a higher priority.  I also
think Chuck would prefer spending less time on clients, have the
clients provide more money, and let them pay for the programming
that needs to be done.  It would seem fair for him to factor in
the needed programming and spread the cost across several projects
as overhead.  The problem is there are a lot more clients and
people who want to be clients than there are paying clients.

Jeff Fox