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I understand that your school uses Mentor Graphics software and have submitted 
chips.  I would like you to answer a couple questions when you have the 
opportunity.  

1. Which product are you using to design your IC's (GDT or IC station).

2. What type of problems have you encountered with our software that has 
   affected the submission process. 

3. Is there any other problem you have encountered in your submission process
   that you would like to see resolved?
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Ron:
We used v7.0 (Chipgraph) several years ago (Fall 1989) for our IC design
class, but we were unable to submit designs due to some limitations in
the toolkit at that time.  The primary problem was the lack of support
for layout extraction, back annotation, and hence simulation of IC layouts,
due to the fact that MGC was using Dracula from Cadence at that time (and
Cadence wasn't giving away software to universities that were using the
MGC tools).  The MOSIS support was minimal to non-existent at that time,
although we did get a pad frame set up and at least got a pretty picture
that might have worked.  We just did not feel safe sending it out for
fab without better verification.

For the Fall 1990 and 1991 offerings of the course, we used MULGA from AT&T
and the Octtools from Berkeley.  We were able to submit several chips using
those tools, but they are a little too research oriented (that is, buggy)
for instructional use.

Responses to your questions:
1. We will be using the IC Station product for our Fall 1992 offering.

2. Not applicable (yet).

3. We anticipate some problems with standard cell library support for
   the MOSIS runs.  The Octtools supported the MSU standard cells; we
   would like to see similar support in the Mentor Graphics environment.
   I believe that the current Version 8.0 distribution only includes an
   EDIF output program, and no input functionality.  We would like to
   have the ability to input EDIF, so that we can input previously developed
   designs.

I read an article in IEEE Circuits & Devices Magazine recently that mentioned
a MOSIS support kit from Mentor Graphics.  Could you send me some information
on what that includes?  Can I get that by contacting the usual
representative (Julie Hansen, I think)?

Joseph B. Evans
Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Telecommunications & Information Sciences Laboratory
University of Kansas       |      Internet: evans@tisl.ukans.edu
Lawrence, KS 66045-2228    |                 evans@ece.ukans.edu
(913) 864-4830             |   Bitnet: evans%tisl@ukanvax.bitnet