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OpenAccess

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This article is about electronic design automation. For other uses, see Open access (disambiguation).

OpenAccess is a community effort to provide true interoperability, not just data exchange, among IC design tools through an open standard data API and reference database supporting that API for IC design. The OpenAccess Coalition is a neutral organization of semiconductor industry companies that are leading this effort operating under Silicon Integration Initiative bylaws. [1]

Today's electonic design environments are a complicated mix of design tools containing proprietary applications and associated databases, and with incompatible file formats and syntaxes.[2][1] IC CAD engineers spend an inordinate amount of time integrating them with thousands of lines of translator code. The resulting flows are fragile and error-prone. As well, they are inefficient and result in longer IC design cycle times. As of 2005, it was the only modern integrated circuit design database which is publicly available. [2]

In 2005 the Cadence Berkeley Labs and the Silicon Integration Initiative launched the OpenAccesGear, a project to develop open source utilities on top of the OpenAccess database. Participants includued University of California at Berkeley, UCLA and UCSC.[3] OA Gear components are available at SourceForge. [4]

The OpenAccess coalition was formed in Q4 1999. The members issued a request-for-technology for existing technology, looking for a solution that was proven and would be commercially adopted, and that supported a broad set of EDA tools. As a result, the Cadence Genesis database and API was selected and now forms the technology base for OpenAccess.

The OpenAccess API is a C++ program interface to IC design data. The API and reference implementation provide a high performance, high capacity electronic design database with architecture designed for easy integration and fast application development. Access to the reference database source code is provided to allow companies to offer contributions to future database enhancements and add proprietary extensions. It will also allow for this database to be used in production environments where software maintenance is critical.

Engineered for industry-wide interoperability, the OpenAccess database allows users to construct flows incorporating design tools from multiple sources to best suit their needs.

The OpenAccess Coalition which consists of semiconductor and EDA companies, including Agilent Technologies, Altera, AMD, AnaGlobe Technology, ANSYS, Atrenta, AWR Corporation, Cadence, D2S, Dolphin Integration, Entasys Design, Fractal Technologies, HP, Huada Empyrean Software, IBM, Intel, Invarian, Jedat, MatrixOne, Mentor Graphics, Micro Magic, Oracle, PDF Solutions, Gmbh, Pulsic Limited, Qualcomm, R3 Logic, Samsung Electronics, SiliconBlue Technologies, Silvaco, Synopsys, TSMC, Tanner Research, Teklatech, Tela Innovations, Texas Instruments, and Zuken.

Client applications can access the OpenAccess database through APIs in multiple programming languages: C++, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby and Tcl.

References

  1. ^ a b Assessment of the OpenAccess Standard: insights on the new EDA industry standard from Hewlett-Packard, a Beta partner and contributing developer, Fourth International Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, 2003, pp. 203-207
  2. ^ a b EDA for IC Implementation, Circuit Design, and Process Technology, 2005, ISBN 1420007955, section "Modern Database Examples"
  3. ^ "Open-source project looks to ignite EDA research" EE Times
  4. ^ OA Gear
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