Viewpoint

Why Windows NT for EDA? Advances in technology make compute power generic. by Dan Ganousis

Users of EDA tools have always been performance sensitive. What design engineer doesn't want a faster simulator? or synthesis that finishes in minutes instead of overnight? What PCB designer isn't interested in the fastest router? The continued brisk pace of technology advancement only serves to make performance an even more important issue for EDA users as the size and breadth of today's design tasks dwarf the efforts required just a few years ago.

Usually, proponents of Windows NT focus on the benefits: the combination of personal productivity and EDA tools on a single piece of hardware, the proven productivity improvements for software developers, and the lower corporate costs due to longer amortization periods for personal computers. These are valid benefits but have not been compelling enough to trigger widespread migration from UNIX to Windows NT as the platform of choice for the EDA community.

The introduction of the Intel PentiumPro and DEC Alpha microprocessors provided the necessary catalyst for the next major EDA paradigm shift that began in 1995. As with every previous platform transition in EDA history, the key enabler is performance. Systems available today running Windows NT on 150MHz PentiumPro and 250MHz Alpha microprocessors provide SPECint95 values of 6.09 and 5.96, respectively. That's almost 50 percent more performance than the 120MHz PA-RISC of the HP J210 workstation, which offers a SPECint95 of only 4.37. And the performance gap is only going to get larger as time goes on. A clear signal of the strength of Windows NT for technical computing can be found in the partnership of Intel and HP for the co-development of future generation Pentium processors.

Windows NT for EDA creates a fascinating market research opportunity because it does not follow the early adopter product life-cycle model that is commonly used in today's high-tech companies. The innovators who normally would be the first to adopt a new, higher performance technology are handcuffed by their enormous internal CAD investments in their existing UNIX environments. These power users also tend to be the most skeptical that a Windows NT environment could ever deliver the power and functionality of their existing UNIX world. Eventually, these users will make the transition--it just takes time. I remember the same kind of reluctance when designers were forced to give up their Apollo workstations and all the wonders of the Aegis operating system. How many folks still run EDA tools on DN10000s? Very few, I suspect.

The reality is, today the best performing EDA tools run on Windows NT--Chronologic VCS (Los Altos, CA), Quad Motive (Camarillo, CA), VeriBest (Boulder, CO)--and users will eventually decide the transition to Windows NT is necessary to gain access to superior performance. I'm not suggesting that UNIX will disappear; instead it will be similar to the Verilog/VHDL situation. UNIX and Windows NT will learn to peacefully coexist and design environments will interoperate across platforms. Companies will integrate Windows NT machines into their existing UNIX environments to provide better throughput for computer intensive applications such as simulation, synthesis, and routing. The UNIX machines will remain to support the many man years of scripts and utilities that have been created around EDA tools. In effect, the UNIX machines will become legacy systems.

Why is Windows NT so important for EDA? It's the performance, period.

Dan Ganousis is the vice-president of marketing at VeriBest, Inc. (Boulder, CO).

To voice an opinion on this or any Integrated System Design article, please e-mail your message to: michael@asic.com.

integrated system design  May 1996