CAD Framework Initiative lists firms in pilot projects

Electronic News, May 11, 1992 by Dan Holden

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- The CAD Framework Initiative, a consortium dedicated to the development of industry standards for EDA frameworks, has revealed the names of participants in four charter pilot programs.

As expected (EN, April 27), the program includes computer manufacturers Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems and Sun Microsystems.

Each of the computer companies will work on separate projects with designated electronic design automation (EDA) vendors to solve specific tool integration problems, thereby defining specific solutions to be packaged into CFI's Release 1.0 specifications, scheduled for release to internal designers by the fourth quarter of 1992. The specifications will be generally available by the end of 3Q 93.

Like any EDA vendor's products, CFI's release 1.0 will include specifications, reference software, a certification process, and technical support via Quick Response Teams (QRTs) made up of CFI member companies' engineers who are familiar with the standard. CFI's product marketing council (PMC) made the decision to reveal the names of the pilot program members to showcase "real-world" testimonials.

The four pilot projects revealed by CFI include Hewlett-Packard, Cadence and Mentor using CFI pilot standards to integrate Cadence's Verilog-XL mixed-level simulator with Mentor's Design Architect and Falcon Framework, with work taking place at Hewlett-Packard's Circuit Technology group. In a surprise move, Mentor last week revealed that it was working on a program of its own with HP that would come up with the same result, without Cadence's help (see story below, pages 13 and 22).

Whether Mentor's project will sideline that CFI pilot program remains to be seen.

Another team, IBM and Cadence, is working on the inter-framework pilot project. This effort uses CFI pilot standards to provide a single user interface to data and tools within Cadence's Design Framework II and IBM's framework environment. Cadence considers this a crucial project in defining the framework environment of the future.

The Euro-CFI Integration pilot project includes Siemens Nixdorf, GMD GmbH (a German government-sponsored CAD research effort) and CADLAB (a cooperative effort between Siemens Nixdorf and the University of Paterborn in Germany). The task here is to integrate the CFI pilot standards into the European JESSI common framework (JCF). The embedded CFI standards would then be delivered to JCF evaluators, including Siemens and Bosch.

The EDA Symphony pilot project is the most ambitious of the four projects. This team includes engineers from Cadence, Harris Scientific Calculations, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys and Viewlogic Systems. Their task is to use the CFI pilot standards to develop interactive analysis solutions using Inter-Tool Communication (ITC) for users at Sun Microsystems.