>  What are edgy questions I can ask these guys at the DVcon Troublemakers
>  panel on Thursday, Feb. 22nd?


From: Carlo Barrientos <carlo.barrientos=user domain=amd not calm>

Hi, John,

My question is for Ted Vucurevich (and all the others, too):

As I see it, Open Access is really just a "binary EDIF" and unless, through
some "Free Software Foundation Miracle", everyone agrees to use OA as the
database for all their tools, it is going to be just another unfullfilled
dream.  Afterall, even "mature" Interchange Formats such as EDIF or SPEF,
which were supposed to make transferring data between vendors' tools easy,
never really worked all that well when it came to "proprietary features"
even when transferring data between tools from the same vendor...

So my question is:

When is the Promise of the Open Access Database that will actually make data
interchangeable between all vendors' tools *real* going to come true?  Given
that in the real business world opening up your proprietary databases to
your competitors is tantamount to "giving away" Intellectual Property which
already cost you non-trivial amounts of R&D dollars to develop?

As I see it, the EDA world has been searching for this Holy Grail of "open
data and tool frameworks" since the early 80's.  They tried consortiums
(like MCC and OVI and Sematech) and they tried common interchange formats
(e.g. GDS2, EDIF, SPF, LEF/DEF ) and they tried 3rd-party independent
database and framework builders (I can't remember any names because those
startups usually died as soon as it became obvious none of the big EDA
companies was ever going to use them except, maybe, for IBM which just
offered to "open up" their own database for Einstimer [for a price])

I hope the panel has an answer.

    - Carlo Barrientos
      AMD                                        Austin, TX