SoftJin claims 400 downloads of Oasis translator

BANGALORE, India — EDA software development services firm, SoftJin, based here, has said there have more than 400 downloads from 40 countries of the free source code for Anuvad, a free suite of GDSII and Oasis libraries and its GDSII-to-Oasis translator, during the last 12 months.

The Open Artwork Systems Interchange Standard was first proposed to replace GDSII in 2002 with the argument that complex chips were becoming unwieldy in the verbose GDSII format, which was producing files so long that errors were almost inevitably being introduced, but which nonetheless did not communicate all the necessary design intent information.

However, support from EDA companies has been relatively slow to appear, picking up pace only in the last year. Synopsys Inc. has disclosed that its Galaxy design platform and design-for-manufacturing (DFM) tool suite will support the Oasis format, which SEMI standardized in 2003. DFM startup Aprio Technologies announced Oasis support in September. Meanwhile, Mentor Graphics' Calibre design rule checking tool accepts Oasis files, and Mentor offers a GDS-to-Oasis translator.

The argument frequently given by EDA companies has been that users are not asking for Oasis, but SoftJin’s downloads were performed by people at IDMs, foundries, mask shops, EDA tool suppliers, fabless semiconductor companies and design consultants. SoftJin has claimed that GDSII files can be compressed in size by a factor of 20 after processing with Anuvad, which it has released to hasten Oasis-based tool development.

“Anuvad offers designers and tool builders a way to jumpstart the path towards Oasis-based flow by helping them develop Oasis-based tools and, or convert their GDSII designs into Oasis format. The tool builders are able to focus on developing high value added tools rather having to spend resources on building Oasis readers, writers and translators,” said Nachiket Urdhwareshe, CEO of SoftJin Technologies Pvt. Ltd. “SoftJin also offers tool development and enhancement services for Oasis-based tools,” he added.

SoftJin claimed Anuvad was one of the first tools to handle the Oasis format and the only one available for free use in source code format in November 2004.