This is VLSI-CAD-"Magic"-compiled in view mode; [Up]
Date: Sun 12-Nov-1991 04:02:17 From: cyliao@iastate.edu (Chun-Yao Liao) Subject: VLSI CAD "Magic" compiled Hi, for you Computer E/EE people interested in "Magic", here's good news. The problem with undefined symbols were solved. Thanks to Gareth Bestor who informed me about those "renamed" symbols. I will make some "touch up"s, and if there's enough interest, i'll make a summary of things I changed. (the source code was about 20 megs... I hope I didn't miss any mod I made... I think I have all of them written down on the paper) BTW, I'd like to have people trying it out on NeXTstation color with color version of X-window. Does color mouseX support 8, or 24 bit color? I run it on my Mono... looks awful boring... and not very clear...
Date: Sun 12-Nov-1991 18:14:18 From: cyliao@iastate.edu (Chun-Yao Liao) Subject: Re: VLSI CAD "Magic" compiled There seem to have quite some interest on this one, so I will post the summary of changes I've made. For people interested in getting it, send request mail to magic@decwrl.dec.com they will give you ftp id and passwd. This is a "Licenced" distribution, and has some restriction porting it outside of US. BTW, Gareth Bestor had compiled this before I do. I received help from him about those renamed function calls, therefore, the credits should go to him.
Date: Sun 15-Nov-1991 20:52:39 From: mayo@pa.dec.com (Bob Mayo) Subject: Re: VLSI CAD "Magic" compiled In article <1991Nov12.181418.5819@news.iastate.edu> cyliao@iastate.edu (Chun-Yao Liao) writes: >There seem to have quite some interest on this one, so I will post >the summary of changes I've made. > >For people interested in getting it, send request mail to > > magic@decwrl.dec.com > >they will give you ftp id and passwd. This is a "Licenced" distribution, >and has some restriction porting it outside of US. Magic is a VLSI layout system that is widely used in the university community, as well as at a few industrial places. It was written in the early 1980's, for bitmapped graphics terminals connected to a VAX. It has evolved quite a bit, and is now an X11 application. Compared to typical NeXT applications, though, the user interface is not very refined. Magic works best with 8 bits of color. Monochrome is pretty hard to use. The program includes layout editing, design rule checking, and circuit extraction. It somes with the irsim simulator. It is weak in the areas of routing and gate array layout. Most people that need to do gate arrays use other tools instead of or in addition to magic. Magic, coupled with a workstation, is sufficient to design custom integrated circuits. Small circuits can be fabricated through MOSIS for less than $1000. So you can actually design real chips as a hobby. It is an amazing world we live in! Here is the official information on magic. --Bob ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Magic note.1 - 9/14/90 - ANNOUNCEMENT: Magic V6 is ready MAGIC VERSION 6 IS NOW AVALABLE (Includes Stanford's IRSIM program) USA sites with Internet Access: You can get Magic V6 via FTP. To receive the account name and password, send a short message to "mayo@decwrl.dec.com". Please use the subject "MAGIC FTP" (all caps) on your mail, and in the body include a sentence or two that lists the cities and states in which you will be using Magic. Magic V6 is not available via FTP outside of the USA. Other sites: To obtain the mag tape version, please request an order form by writing directly to: Cindy Manly-Fields ILP Software Distribution Office 479 Cory Hall University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 Phone: 415-643-6687 The version 6 release is "frozen", and is not expected to change in the future. Updates will be made via a collection of notes available via FTP from the following public area: machine: gatekeeper.dec.com (16.1.0.2) account: anonymous password: guest directory: pub/DEC/magic Please check this directory for the latest updates. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Magic is a popular IC layout tool in common use in universities and a number of industrial sites. The Magic V6 comes with source code and a relaxed copyright that allows you to redistribute it, modify it, and generally do what you want with it. This version of Magic gathers together work done by numerous people at several institutions since Magic version 4 was released from Berkeley on the 1986 VLSI tools tape. Version 6 is a release of Magic and IRSIM. You'll probably want to obtain other tools by ordering the 1986 VLSI Tools Tape from Berkeley. This release has been prepared with the assistance of several groups. Much of the new software came from Walter Scott's group at the Lawrence Livermore National Labs (LLNL). LLNL also provided partial funding to help prepare the release. Digital Equipment Corporation's Western Research Lab (DECWRL) helped out by providing computer equipment, a place to work, and the services of one of us (Robert Mayo). Don Stark, Michael Arnold, and Gordon Hamachi also worked on the release at DECWRL. Stanford donated significant pieces of new code, including a simulation system called IRSIM. Other individuals and institutions have also contributed code and assistance in ways too numerous to detail here. New features in Magic Version 6 include: New and Improved Routing - Michael Arnold and Walter Scott of LLNL Three major routing improvements have been made in this version of Magic. There is a new, improved, global router courtesy of Walter Scott (of LLNL). Walter Scott has also added a gate array router. See the "garoute" command in the manual page for details. Michael Arnold (of LLNL) has written an interactive maze router that allows the user to specify hints to control the routing. See the documentation for the "iroute" command. Extractor Enhancements - Don Stark of Stanford and Walter Scott of LLNL The new "extresis" command, developed by Don Stark, provides substantially better resistance extraction. Magic's normal extraction ("extract") lumps resistances on a node into a single value. In branching networks, this approximation is often not acceptable. Resis was written to solve this problem. Walter Scott added accurate path length extraction, an important feature when dealing with high speed circuits, such as ECL. New contact structure - Walter Scott and Michael Arnold of LLNL and Don Stark of Stanford Multilayer contacts are handled better. In the previous version of Magic, there needed to be a separate contact type for each possible combination of contact layers over a given point. This caused a combinatorial explosion of tile types for multi-layer technologies with stacked contacts. Under the new scheme, there are only a couple of tile types for each layer: one that connects up, one that connects down, and one that connects in both directions. Simulator Interface to IRSIM - Stanford A simulator interface is provided courtesy of Stanford. See the commands "startrsim", "simcmd", and "rsim". The irsim simulator, Stanford's much improved rewrite of esim, is included in this distribution. Credit goes to Mike Chow, Arturo Salz, and Mark Horowitz. New device/machine Support - Various X11 is fully supported in this release, and is the preferred interface. Older drivers for graphics terminals and X10 are also included, but X11 is the preferred interface (meaning it is better supported and you'll have lots of company). Magic's X11 driver has a long history, starting with an X10 driver by Doug Pan at Stanford. Brown University, the University of Southern California, the University of Washington, and Lawrence Livermore National Labs all prepared improved versions, some of them for X11. Don Stark of Stanford took on the task of pulling these together and producing the X11 driver in this release. Magic runs on a number of workstations, such as the DECstation 3100 and Sun's SPARC processors. Partial Unix System V support is provided. The system also runs on the MacII. Don Stark gets credit for the System V mods and support for HP machines, while Mike Chow helped get it running on the MacII. To assist people with small machines (such as the Mac II), Magic can now be compiled without some of its fancy features. Compilation flags are provided, as indicated below, to eliminate things like routing, plotting, or calma output. This is courtesy of Don Stark. --Bob Mayo, mayo@decwrl.dec.com
These are the contents of the former NiCE NeXT User Group NeXTSTEP/OpenStep software archive, currently hosted by Marcel Waldvogel and Netfuture.ch.