IC5.0 and Linux

[GeorgeC]

It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
Assura
Spectre
SpectreS Verilog, etc

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU
Graphics
Memory
Drives

Which Linux is supported?
Redhat
Debian
Others


Any help and suggestions welcomed.
Yes, I know I can get much of this info from CADENCE but this group tends
to have a better, hands-on view of things.

Thanks...GeorgeC

 

[B]

GeorgeC wrote:

It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.
how many boxes are you planning to set?

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
yes
Assura
Diva yes
Spectre
SpectreS

Verilog
yes

, etc ?

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU
fastest
Graphics
see previous posts.
Memory
max
Drives
largest

Which Linux is supported?
Redhat
7.x
Debian
no
Others
no


Any help and suggestions welcomed.
Yes, I know I can get much of this info from CADENCE but this group tends
to have a better, hands-on view of things.

Thanks...GeorgeC

 

[Spaller]

"GeorgeC" <george018@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:k4%7b.564$%G3.523@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...

It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.

A few questions please:

[snip]
Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU
Graphics
Memory
Drives

Due to the limited cache size on Intel CPU's, go for the fastest FSB mobo's
one can afford.

spaller

--

....

 

[Andrew Plumb]

[see if this goes out this time...]
GeorgeC wrote:

It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
Assura
Spectre
SpectreS Verilog, etc

All of the above.

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU

Go for more cache, and faster Mobo/RAM interfaces. Processor speed
doesn't tend to be as much of a bottleneck as getting data in/out/around.

Graphics

YMMV. Don't rely on gaming/3D performance specs as your only metric.
If you can, find a board that can do both 24-bit and 8-bit PseudoColor
simultaneously. Even better, try a selection of cards and see which
works best for you.

Ultimately, the graphics card is one of the lesser-cost items in the
whole system. Consider going dual-headed with a couple of smaller LCD
panels instead of one single high-res display. Others will have to
comment on how successful they've been with this sort of config; it's
very hardware and Xserver dependent.

Memory

Max it out to 2GB. If you go higher, be prepared to recompile the
kernel with extended memory options. Not for the faint of heart, but I
know of others doing it successfully in both 2.4.x stable kernels, and
varying success with 2.5.x and 2.6.0-test development releases.

Drives

You can never have too much.

Which Linux is supported?
Redhat
Debian
Others

Officially RH7.x; RH8.0 in the not-too-distant future.

Unofficially, lots of people are already using RH8.0. I haven't tried
the latest IC5032 ISR on my home RH9 machine (not enough room), so
someone else will have to tell you if they work yet.

Also, I'm waiting on some new hardware to see what it would take to
build a Linux From Scratch (see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) system
that can run the tools. Perhaps a bootable DVD-RW with a full tool
install as well... My goal is to get this in recipe form for both an
all-stable set of source code and a minimal set of RH source RPMs. Then
in theory one can figure out what the delta is between the officially
supported RH versions and the distro of your choice.

Hope this helps!

Andrew.

 

[Erik Wanta]

Andrew:
RH9 seems to work fine with the IC5032 releases. You need to setenv
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL 2.4.1 to get the HED to come up however.
---
Erik


Andrew Plumb <aannddrreeww@pplluummbb.oorrgg> wrote in message news:<%8L8b.448997$4UE.385224@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com>...

GeorgeC wrote:
It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
Assura
Spectre
SpectreS Verilog, etc

All of the above.

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU

Go for more cache, and faster Mobo/RAM interfaces. Processor speed
doesn't tend to be as much of a bottleneck as getting data in/out/around.

Graphics

YMMV. Don't rely on gaming/3D performance specs as your only metric.
If you can, find a board that can do both 24-bit and 8-bit PseudoColor
simultaneously. Even better, try a selection of cards and see which
works best for you.

Ultimately, the graphics card is one of the lesser-cost items in the
whole system. Consider going dual-headed with a couple of smaller LCD
panels instead of one single high-res display. Others will have to
comment on how successful they've been with this sort of config; it's
very hardware and Xserver dependent.

Memory

Max it out to 2GB. If you go higher, be prepared to recompile the
kernel with extended memory options. Not for the faint of heart, but I
know of others doing it successfully in both 2.4.x stable kernels, and
varying success with 2.5.x and 2.6.0-test development releases.

Drives

You can never have too much.

Which Linux is supported?
Redhat
Debian
Others

Officially RH7.x; RH8.0 in the not-too-distant future.

Unofficially, lots of people are already using RH8.0. I haven't tried
the latest IC5032 ISR on my home RH9 machine (not enough room), so
someone else will have to tell you if they work yet.

Also, I'm waiting on some new hardware to see what it would take to
build a Linux From Scratch (see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) system
that can run the tools. Perhaps a bootable DVD-RW with a full tool
install as well... My goal is to get this in recipe form for both an
all-stable set of source code and a minimal set of RH source RPMs. Then
in theory one can figure out what the delta is between the officially
supported RH versions and the distro of your choice.

Hope this helps!

Andrew.

 

[B]

Erik Wanta wrote:

Andrew:
RH9 seems to work fine with the IC5032 releases. You need to setenv
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL 2.4.1 to get the HED to come up however.
---
Erik

I am running RH9 since a while. But Cadence does not support it.

 

[Harald Neubauer]

"GeorgeC" <george018@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<k4%7b.564$%G3.523@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>...

It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.
Good idea, we are now only buying new linuxes instead of Sun

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
Assura
Spectre
SpectreS Verilog, etc
yes

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU
the fastest (obvius)
Graphics
DONT try Matrox, we use Asus with Nvidia chipset, which works fine and

is cost-effective (100$ for 2xdvi dualhead..)

Memory
min 1G as desktop
Drives
around 100G should be enough, software is surely installed on a

server..?!

Which Linux is supported?
we use Redhat 8.0, which is not official suported

These machines are really liked by my collegues, fast graphics, fast
simulation, cheap (around 1000$) with 2x 19" TFT (each around $550)
you get a powerful desktop around $2000! Not too many Sun out there,
which can beat this performance...
Regards, Harald

 

[Spaller]

"Andrew Plumb" <aannddrreeww@pplluummbb.oorrgg> wrote in message
news:%8L8b.448997$4UE.385224@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...

Memory

Max it out to 2GB. If you go higher, be prepared to recompile the
kernel with extended memory options. Not for the faint of heart, but I
know of others doing it successfully in both 2.4.x stable kernels, and
varying success with 2.5.x and 2.6.0-test development releases.

Go to 4GB. The above implies recompilation is necessary for RH7.[23]
kernels. Not so.

spaller

--

....

 

[GeorgeC]

"Andrew Plumb" <aannddrreeww@pplluummbb.oorrgg> wrote in message
news:%8L8b.448997$4UE.385224@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...

GeorgeC wrote:
It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
Assura
Spectre
SpectreS Verilog, etc

All of the above.

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU

Go for more cache, and faster Mobo/RAM interfaces. Processor speed
doesn't tend to be as much of a bottleneck as getting data in/out/around.

Graphics

YMMV. Don't rely on gaming/3D performance specs as your only metric.
If you can, find a board that can do both 24-bit and 8-bit PseudoColor
simultaneously. Even better, try a selection of cards and see which
works best for you.

Ultimately, the graphics card is one of the lesser-cost items in the
whole system. Consider going dual-headed with a couple of smaller LCD
panels instead of one single high-res display. Others will have to
comment on how successful they've been with this sort of config; it's
very hardware and Xserver dependent.

Memory

Max it out to 2GB. If you go higher, be prepared to recompile the
kernel with extended memory options. Not for the faint of heart, but I
know of others doing it successfully in both 2.4.x stable kernels, and
varying success with 2.5.x and 2.6.0-test development releases.

Drives

You can never have too much.

Which Linux is supported?
Redhat
Debian
Others

Officially RH7.x; RH8.0 in the not-too-distant future.

Unofficially, lots of people are already using RH8.0. I haven't tried
the latest IC5032 ISR on my home RH9 machine (not enough room), so
someone else will have to tell you if they work yet.

Also, I'm waiting on some new hardware to see what it would take to
build a Linux From Scratch (see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) system
that can run the tools. Perhaps a bootable DVD-RW with a full tool
install as well... My goal is to get this in recipe form for both an
all-stable set of source code and a minimal set of RH source RPMs. Then
in theory one can figure out what the delta is between the officially
supported RH versions and the distro of your choice.

Hope this helps!

Andrew.

Thanks all.

But I have to start to winder if changing an entire platform is worth the
trouble and expense?

I mean, CADENCE and SUN play nice together. SUNBLADE 150 650Mhz and maxed
out in memory with an XVR 500 buffer seem to be OK for the average layout
designer at
a very reasonable cost.
An upper end SUNBLADE 2000 for the Spectre user and maybe a dedicated
high-end server
for remotely running DRC/LVS.
Particularly with a small company with a dozen or so users with a stable
UNIX infrastructure,
does it make sense to take the ship in another direction?
I'm not opposed to new and better ideas, but once your start having to try
different video cards,
dual processors, etc. the costs start to be pretty comparable and the
introduction of incompatabilities
between SW/HW start to take over as major bottleneck particularly when human
resources
are stretched.

Am I too narrow-minded?

....GeorgeC

 

[Erik Wanta]

Geroge:
What if you want to submit 100s of jobs to do circuit optimization?
What if you want to submit all of your Assura DRC/LVS/RCX jobs to a
compute farm? Is a linux compute farm not cheaper?

What if you want to design on your laptop while eating breakfast?
---
Erik

"GeorgeC" <george018@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<jTiab.36644$Aq2.7887@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net>...

"Andrew Plumb" <aannddrreeww@pplluummbb.oorrgg> wrote in message
news:%8L8b.448997$4UE.385224@news01.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...
[see if this goes out this time...]
GeorgeC wrote:
It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
Assura
Spectre
SpectreS Verilog, etc

All of the above.

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU

Go for more cache, and faster Mobo/RAM interfaces. Processor speed
doesn't tend to be as much of a bottleneck as getting data in/out/around.

Graphics

YMMV. Don't rely on gaming/3D performance specs as your only metric.
If you can, find a board that can do both 24-bit and 8-bit PseudoColor
simultaneously. Even better, try a selection of cards and see which
works best for you.

Ultimately, the graphics card is one of the lesser-cost items in the
whole system. Consider going dual-headed with a couple of smaller LCD
panels instead of one single high-res display. Others will have to
comment on how successful they've been with this sort of config; it's
very hardware and Xserver dependent.

Memory

Max it out to 2GB. If you go higher, be prepared to recompile the
kernel with extended memory options. Not for the faint of heart, but I
know of others doing it successfully in both 2.4.x stable kernels, and
varying success with 2.5.x and 2.6.0-test development releases.

Drives

You can never have too much.

Which Linux is supported?
Redhat
Debian
Others

Officially RH7.x; RH8.0 in the not-too-distant future.

Unofficially, lots of people are already using RH8.0. I haven't tried
the latest IC5032 ISR on my home RH9 machine (not enough room), so
someone else will have to tell you if they work yet.

Also, I'm waiting on some new hardware to see what it would take to
build a Linux From Scratch (see http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/) system
that can run the tools. Perhaps a bootable DVD-RW with a full tool
install as well... My goal is to get this in recipe form for both an
all-stable set of source code and a minimal set of RH source RPMs. Then
in theory one can figure out what the delta is between the officially
supported RH versions and the distro of your choice.

Hope this helps!

Andrew.




Thanks all.

But I have to start to winder if changing an entire platform is worth the
trouble and expense?

I mean, CADENCE and SUN play nice together. SUNBLADE 150 650Mhz and maxed
out in memory with an XVR 500 buffer seem to be OK for the average layout
designer at
a very reasonable cost.
An upper end SUNBLADE 2000 for the Spectre user and maybe a dedicated
high-end server
for remotely running DRC/LVS.
Particularly with a small company with a dozen or so users with a stable
UNIX infrastructure,
does it make sense to take the ship in another direction?
I'm not opposed to new and better ideas, but once your start having to try
different video cards,
dual processors, etc. the costs start to be pretty comparable and the
introduction of incompatabilities
between SW/HW start to take over as major bottleneck particularly when human
resources
are stretched.

Am I too narrow-minded?

...GeorgeC

 

[Mike Stabenfeldt]

"GeorgeC" <george018@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<k4%7b.564$%G3.523@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>...

It's time to look at new hardware and Linux.

A few questions please:

Are all components of Virtuoso supported for Linux?
Layout/DRC/LVS?
Assura
Spectre
SpectreS Verilog, etc

Any recommendations on hardware?
CPU
Graphics
Memory
Drives

Which Linux is supported?
Redhat
Debian
Others


Any help and suggestions welcomed.
Yes, I know I can get much of this info from CADENCE but this group tends
to have a better, hands-on view of things.

Thanks...GeorgeC

George,
I think it may be cost effective especially if your adding
seats. Consider my opteron box with 1GB of memory was only 1.5K.
My editor (Slam) is already ported to the opteron. The current
deal is 4copies/yr for 3.5K. So for around 3K you can get a layout seat.
As Erik mentioned, you can even look over your layout over
breakfast on a laptop too. Something to think about.

Mike Stabenfeldt
http://www.stabie-soft.com