EDIF 2 0 0 -- Release 7.6
The major feature of this new release of the Berkeley EDIF 2 0 0 software is the implementation of the CAD Framework Initiative (CFI) Scalar Netlist Interface for 1990 as was demonstrated at the 27th Design Automation Conference in Orlando, Florida. Through the use of this interface it is possible to make any program using the CFI standard read EDIF 2 0 0 as input with no modification to the program. That is, any program, using the CFI-defined interface, can directly read data from an edifFile through the use of this new package. In addition to this new feature, there are numerous bug fixes and portability enhancements that have been contributed by users of the toolkit.
The Berkeley EDIF 2 0 0 software is an environment for managing EDIF 2 0 0. The system is a translator-building toolkit that provides all facilities necessary for building a translator to or from EDIF 2 0 0. Using the toolkit, it is possible to construct any translator; the translator-writer should only have to provide access to the source or target data format.
The toolkit uses an efficient in-core data structure specifically designed to store the EDIF syntax. This data structure is called the EDIF Heap. The EDIF Heap supports the storage of the EDIF syntax as well as providing a compiler-like symbol-table data structure.
Lisp memory management systems have been extensively investigated. Because there are many similarities between Lisp and EDIF, the results from this work have been used to advantage in the implementation of the EDIF Heap. For example the scheme known as typed pages is used in the EDIF Heap to simulate a tagged architecture. Further, the Lisp symbol-table data structure, called the environment, has been extended for use in the EDIF Heap. In Lisp, the environment need only support two name spaces; in EDIF 2 0 0, there are seventeen name spaces.
The toolkit consists of a storage manager for the EDIF Heap that provides automatic allocation and garbage-collection services. Also provided are routines converting the EDIF Heap structures to and from their printed form. These routines perform reading and printing of the EDIF syntax. Other routines provide the services of macro-expansion, expression-evaluation and statement-execution. The goal of the EDIF 200 software is to provide an environment that will support the manipulation of EDIF in a straightforward manner and also to provide a system with which it is easy to build translators.
In addition to the new CFI Scalar Netlist Interface, Release 7.6 also contains EDIF-manipulating programs such as the edb, the EDIF debugger, and edifdiff, which compares two edifFiles independent of how they were formatted.
In addition, Release 7.6 supports all edifLevels and all keywordLevels. The set of tools in the EDIF 2 0 0 tools are translators to and from CIF, OCT, a linter for syntax and semantics checking, an EDIF debugger, which has much of the flavor of a C source-code debugger, a PostScript plotter, and two EDIF manipulation programs designed to perform such operations as macro expansion, parameterized-design instantiation, and a host of other operations.
The toolkit provides a simple programming paradigm and users are encouraged to use the system to build translators to and from their own databases.
Documentation Included with the Program:
- W. C. Baker and A. R. Newton, "Using the Berkeley EDIF Heap to Implement a Translator-Building Toolkit," Digest of Technical Papers 5th EDIFWorld Conf., September 1989. Available separately for $2.50
- Release Notes and Installation Guide. Available separately for $4.00
- Manual Pages Parts I & II. Available separately for $35.00 per volume
Foreign Distribution: Requires special permission to be granted by faculty member in charge of software. May delay order slightly.