P
Phil Tomson
Guest
OSX is basically FreeBSD unix under the hood with a very nice
GUI. Given the fact that dual processor G5's are essentially high
performance Unix workstations that also happen to run all of
those so-called 'productivity apps', I'm wondering if we'll see any
Commercial EDA apps released for the platform? Most of the OpenSource EDA
tools like Icarus, GHDL, GTKWave, etc. are already running on OSX (it's
quite easy to port code from Linux to OSX - usually no changes are required).
I suspect that support issues would probably be less than those
associated with Linux as well because there are less flavors.
Having a plethora of choices of distros is one of Linux's strong points
and it's just fine as long as you've got the source code for a given tool
(like those listed above) but with closed-source tools it can be
problematic which is why most EDA vendors still only support RedHat 7.2
(I recall running that version back in '99
or maybe RH 8.0. And then
there's 64bit support: are you going to support Opteron or Itanium
binaries (or both) for example.
Don't get me wrong, I still like and use Linux, but after using OSX for a
few months I'm really liking not having to be a sysadmin for a laptop.
;-) This would also seem to be a benefit for companies as well. Sure
Apple hardware is pricier than PC hardware, but when you compare that price
difference (maybe $500 at the highend) with the price
of EDA software ($5K - $100K+) the price difference is insignificant
compared to the potential benefits. Since each engineer would only need
one OSX machine on their desk (it runs those so-called 'productivity
apps') that would probably make up for the price difference quite easily.
Phil
GUI. Given the fact that dual processor G5's are essentially high
performance Unix workstations that also happen to run all of
those so-called 'productivity apps', I'm wondering if we'll see any
Commercial EDA apps released for the platform? Most of the OpenSource EDA
tools like Icarus, GHDL, GTKWave, etc. are already running on OSX (it's
quite easy to port code from Linux to OSX - usually no changes are required).
I suspect that support issues would probably be less than those
associated with Linux as well because there are less flavors.
Having a plethora of choices of distros is one of Linux's strong points
and it's just fine as long as you've got the source code for a given tool
(like those listed above) but with closed-source tools it can be
problematic which is why most EDA vendors still only support RedHat 7.2
(I recall running that version back in '99
or maybe RH 8.0. And then there's 64bit support: are you going to support Opteron or Itanium
binaries (or both) for example.
Don't get me wrong, I still like and use Linux, but after using OSX for a
few months I'm really liking not having to be a sysadmin for a laptop.
;-) This would also seem to be a benefit for companies as well. Sure
Apple hardware is pricier than PC hardware, but when you compare that price
difference (maybe $500 at the highend) with the price
of EDA software ($5K - $100K+) the price difference is insignificant
compared to the potential benefits. Since each engineer would only need
one OSX machine on their desk (it runs those so-called 'productivity
apps') that would probably make up for the price difference quite easily.
Phil