【正文】 user munity, according to Kunkel. It remains to be seen whether SystemC or Superlog wins out in the end. Least desirable would be an oute like the impasse between Virology and VHDL, in which both prevailed, forcing electronic design automation vendors to support both platforms in a wasteful duplication of effort. THE VERIFICATION NIGHTMARE If today39。t just linked together the different tools,” he explained. 39。t familiar with what P property ishe is used to simulation and static timing. As a remedy, InnoLogic developed a symbolic simulation tool, which blends simulation and formal verification. It is a Virology simulator except instead of sending Is and Os through the logic, the too1 propagates symbol or symbols plus binary user gains improved functional coverage dong with much faster verification. To illustrate, to pletely verify a fourbit adder would require 256 binary vectorsand take 256 simulation cycles. With symbols, it takes just one cycle.Just as with formal verification, there are limits to the plexity of the circuits that symbolic simulation can pletely verily. Both have trouble with multipliers, for example. A model checker will grind and grind and never produce a result, explained Napper. But in our tool we take some symbol inputs and switch them to binary values, that reduces the job from a 32 to a 16bit multiplier. And we report to the user that we were able to verify the upper the operands. InnoLogic has announced two Versifies of symbolic simulation. ESI39。 now closer together, must also be controlled. Several iterations through synthesis and placement may be necessary to achieve the required timing, if it can be acplished at all. The solution proposed by Monterey Design Systems Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., is called global design technology. This proprietary puting approach simultaneously explores, analyzes, and optimizes all aspects of the physical design. The tint product containing the technology is Dolphin, which was announced in April of last year. Dolphin simultaneously places and router each gate and flipflop using the results or the analysis and maintaining all specified constraints. (Most place androute tools sequentially analyze the layout for each type of constraint.) It performs timing and logic optimization for every placement move.Timing closure is top priority for developers of the Blast Fusion physical design system from Magma Design Automations., Cupertino, Calif. Its methodology, called FixedTiming, brings timing within specified limits without iterating between synthesis and physical design .Basically, he approach fixes timing first, then adjusts cell sizes to achieve the timing requirements. Varying the cell sizes always he tool to supply the right drive strength or the load.EDA ON THE WEB As established electronic design automation panies try to sort out how to utilize the internet in their product Inks, smaller, more agile panies and startups arc coining up with innovative products and services, mainly in the areas or design management. A pioneer in this area is Synchronicity Inc., a virtual pany headquartered in Marlboro, Mass. Synchronicity is now being joined by other panies seeking to use the internet to advantage. The concern of , Milpitas, Calif a provider of Webbased engineering tools 39。 design automation, is the extraction of useful information about ICs, chip sets, and boards from suppliers39。s products are based on the electronic ponent interchange (ECIX) standard developed by EDA standards organization SI, Austin, Texas, and on the Extensible Markup Language (XML), that allows the creation or Webbask documents having (more functionality than with the conventional Hypertext Markup Language (HTM1.). The pany’s products include QuickData Server, a parametric search engine for electronic ponent information, and Quickdata Miner, which transform information contained in PDF data sheets into a usable form. The mission or Genedax Inc., Portland, Ore. is to use the Web to increase designed ability to create and manage large, plex designs, to iron design ICLISC, and to improve access to intellectual property. The pany plans to announce a product in the first quarter or the year. John Ott, vice president of sales and marketing, told Sprctmni that its products will be based on the operating systems and browsers developed by Microsott Corp., Redmond, Wash. Also,