History of EDA (electronic design automation)?

[Zane H. Healy]

At 10:24 PM -0700 12/11/06, Richard wrote:
>What about the design software?  I imagine the first generation of EDA
>software was created in-house by pioneers of VLSI design.  But what
>about when the tools started to become commodities?  What about early
>releases of software from a company like Mentor Graphics?

Have you seen the prices of just a single seat of that kind of 
software?  Plus they require license servers for the software to 
work.  It doesn't matter if you have the software without the 
licenses the stuff won't run, and both tend to be highly guarded. 
Also a lot of in-house software is still used.  This isn't the kind 
of thing that finds its way out of the companies that use/write it.

At 9:13 AM -0800 12/12/06, Chuck Guzis wrote:
>ZyCAD was the one I was trying to remember.  A friend went to work
>there swearing that it was "the way of the future".  One of those
>technological dead-ends, I guess.  Flash in the pan.

That's the one I was thinking of.  I helped support a bunch of the 
boxes nearly 10 years ago.  Rather fragile frightening boxes as I 
recall.  After Zycad went under we kept them alive for a short time 
via cannibalization until we could get everything moved off of them.

		Zane


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