Upcoming Event for June 2009


Date: Thursday, June 4, 2009
        6:00pm: Refreshments, Food, and Social Time
        7:00pm: Technical Presentation
Cosponsored by: IEEE Circuit and Systems, Santa Clara Valley Chapter (CAS)
Place: Simularium Room at the University of California in Santa Cruz (Room 180, Engineering Bldg 2). Follow directions and parking Information. There will be a two dollar fee for parking, but food is on us.
RSVP: by emailing to siero@ee.com (please put RSVP on subject).



Title

Electric: a Multithreaded Integrated-Circuit Design System

Access a PDF of this presentation by clicking HERE.


Speaker

Dr. Steven M. Rubin


Abstract

The Electric VLSI Design System is an open-source circuit-design system that has been used for decades to make integrated circuit (IC) chips. Written in 1982, it predates most commercial circuit design systems available today. Beginning in 2003, a small team at Sun Microsystems translated Electric from C to Java, completing the task in less than two years. The resulting system is more stable, has an improved user interface, and (to the surprise of many) is faster.

One of the reasons for the new translation was to take advantage of Java's powerful multithreading facilities. While attempting to make use of these facilities, it was determined that a thread-safe database was needed. We split the system into a database server and a user-interface client. This new database has a number of advantages, including: collaborative design, thin-client design terminals, reliable crash recovery, reduced memory usage, and the ability to use multiple processors.

This talk describes these improvements to Electric and describes two multithreading facilities that have been built: a design-rule checker (DRC) and a wire router.

Biography

Steven M. Rubin is the author of the Electric VLSI Design System, and the CAD tools textbook "Computer Aids for VLSI Design." He received his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University and has done research at Bell Labs, Schlumberger, Apple Computer, Interval Research, and Sun Microsystems. Specializing in visually-oriented computing, his research has spanned computer vision, graphics, and CAD. Steve was also the lead singer of Severe Tire Damage, the first band to perform live on the Internet.

For more on Steve, see www.rulabinsky.com/steve
For more on Electric, see www.staticfreesoft.com

Directions

For directions to UCSC from different parts of the bay area, click here .

The Baskin Engineering Buildings are located in the northwest corner of UCSC, on "Science Hill." Once at UCSC proceed up Coolidge Drive following the main road onto McLaughlin Drive. as McLaughlin Drive ends, turn left onto Heller Drive, then left again into the multi-level "West Core Parking" Structure (the closest parking to Baskin Engineering).

The best parking choice is to buy a Core West night parking permits at the Main Entrance Kiosk (Bay & High) for $2. The kiosk is open until 7:00AM to 8:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. These permits will be valid for any Core West Parking space (except specially marked spaces).

For any additional details related to parking in Core West click here. You can also just feed a meter in the parking lot as an alternative. A complete UCSC campus map(.pdf) is available, as well as a map/web site which shows the location of the Jack Baskin Engineering Bldg and Engineering Bldg 2.

Once in the Parking lot, to get to the Simularium go to the streeet level (2nd) floor of the Parking Space, cross the street go past the Baskin Engineering Bldg 1 to Bldg 2, the Simularium is off the courtyard lying between Baskin (E1) and Engineering 2 (E2) buildings.