Editorial

Linux Wins the Shootout with Windows NT 'Linux bigots' slam NT and Microsoft and criticize EDA vendors. The vendors say that they see no demand for Linux and tell them to take their fight to their management. by Jonah McLeod

At the Design Automation Conference in San Francisco in June, Integrated System Design sponsored a panel exploring which operating system IC designers preferred for EDA applications on the PC. The event, which was held at 10:00 AM, Tuesday, June 14, drew a little over 200 people, and the vast majority were ardent Linux supporters. (We gave out free T-shirts, one version saying "Linux bigot" and the other saying "NT bigot" on the back in large letters. Guess which one was the hot item.)

The panel began with James Lee, senior consulting engineering with Seva Technologies, Inc. in Fremont, Calif., reporting the results of the latest Windows NT benchmark, published in our July 1998 issue. An admitted Linux fan, Lee gave NT its due. He showed that Synopsys Design Compiler on high-end NT­based Pentium systems outperformed the same application on a high-end UltraSPARC workstation from Sun Microsystems.

From that point, the panel discussion moved to why Linux was a better alternative to NT for EDA applications. Larry Augustin, president of VA Research, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., described the growing acceptance of the Linux operating system worldwide, citing a Datapro study to back up his assertions. Then a representative from Microsoft, Daniel Small, engineering evangelist, spoke about the success of NT in the marketplace.

Following the presentations, questions from the floor began to assail Small, occasionally punctuated by comments to and from other panel members. Perhaps the most telling moment in the interchange between Small and the audience was in response to criticisms of NT's lack of support for scripting capability. Small blithely dismissed the need for scripts, saying that they reflected the inadequacies of the tools, thus earning an uproar of disapproval from the audience.

Beyond the verbal abuse heaped on Microsoft, the panel did address the question of why most EDA vendors had chosen Windows NT rather than a Unix variant for the PC. Venk Shukla, the vice president of marketing at Ambit Design Systems, Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif., stated that his customers had simply not demanded the company's synthesizer, Buildgates, on Linux.

However, seeing the groundswell of support for Linux, Shukla gave out his e-mail address and encouraged the audience to send him a purchase order for Buildgates on Linux and he would handle the request--Ambit has a version of its tool for Linux, which it doesn't offer for sale. (The Linux version would cost the same as the Unix version that runs on the Sun workstation.)

Dan Page, CEO staff for administration at Avanti Corp. of Fremont, Calif., echoed Shukla's assertion, though he stopped short of offering a Linux version of any Avanti tool. He explained the economic motives for supporting an operating system platform, namely, that there has to be sufficient demand to justify the port.

Members of the audience pointed out that Microsoft was spending lavishly to promote NT to the IS department of large corporations. In contrast, diehard Linux supporters inside those companies are vainly attempting to educate their management about the evils of NT and the virtues of Linux. One audience member boasted that his management is finally beginning to listen.

One key point made by Shukla and others was that the audience's argument--and engineers' in general--is with their managers and not with the EDA vendors. It's the managers who control the dollars, and the vendors will respond to the market. In fact, to make his point, Shukla told the story of an Indian who sold food to both sides in Afganistan's civil war. Speak up to your management, the audience was told; if you convince them, we'll be glad to oblige.

At the end, I proposed an idea to the two EDA companies represented on the panel. I asked Ambit and Avanti to consider partnering to create a complete front-end tool flow for Linux on the PC, comprising Verilog simulation (Avanti's Polaris) and synthesis (Ambit's Buildgates). My question to you, the readers, is this: Would any of you find such a solution compelling enough to give it a try? If you like the solution, let me know by e-mail (jonah@isdmag.com) and I'll pass your requests on to Ambit and Avanti. This may be your last chance to get two significant EDA vendors to take Linux seriously, so if you have any interest at all, act now or forever hold your peace.

Hear an audio version of the debate at: Linux vs NT Aftermath .

To voice an opinion on this or any Integrated System Design article, please email your message to miker@isdmag.com.

integrated system design  August 1998