EDA News Monday April 12, 2004 From: EDACafe ÿÿ Previous Issues _____ http://www.mentor.com/fpga/ _____ About This Issue 64-bit Computing Linux Style _____ April 5 - 9, 2004 By Dr. Jack Horgan Read business product alliance news and analysis of weekly happenings _____ 64-bit processing has been around since the mid nineties in the UNIX workstation arena (SUN's Ultra Sparc, HP's PA-RISC and IBM Power) and supported in applications by EDA vendors. In contrast 64-bit architecture is relatively new to the PC world and EDA vendor application support on PCs even more recent. One might well ask "What does 64 bit offer over 32 bit?" An n-bit processor can process an n-bit number in a single clock cycle. A 32-bit processor can handle a number up to 2^32 or roughly 4.3 billion. By comparison a 64-bit processor can handle a number up to 2^64 or roughly 18.4 quintillion (18,400,000,000,000,000,000). This difference in "dynamic range" gives a significant performance edge to the 64-bit architecture when dealing with large numbers which occur in any number of technical fields. Integer arithmetic of very large numbers using 64-bit registers would execute considerably faster than in a 32-bit architecture. However, decimal operations are already performed in double precision using floating point registers in 32-bit computers. More importantly is the significant impact of 64-bit architecture in terms of address space. A 32-bit process can access only 4.3 billion bits or 4.3 Gigabytes of memory. With 64-bit computing processors can access 16 extrabytes or 16 billion gigabytes of memory. Although 4 gigabytes sounds like a lot of memory, it must hold the operating systems, the application program and the application data. If the total exceeds this limit, some of the memory content will be swapped out to disk and possibly swapped back in at a later time. Memory access times are orders of magnitude faster than disk access times. In a severely constrained memory system, one can encounter a "thrashing" effect. In certain cases entire data bases or large files could be contained in the virtual address space and even in physical memory for immediate accessibility. Some applications do their modeling or simulation with large data arrays that could be retained in memory. 64-bit architecture supports scalability in terms of data base size. 64-bit processors date all the way back to 1993 with Digital Equipments Alpha Chip. Since then there have been several 64-bit processors targeted at high end computing rather than desktop applications. In May 2001 Intel introduced the Itanium 64-bit chip for personal computers which was not very successful for a number of reasons including the infamous floating point problem. In July 2002 Intel introduced its successor Itanium 2. In April 2003 AMD introduced AMD64 processor family including Opeteron and Athlon. The two vendors have marketed different approaches. Intel targeted the Itanium at high end computing that had been the province of UNIX operating systems with a dedicated 64-bit only chip. The 64-bit architecture called IA64 was a departure from the existing x86 consequently it was incompatibility with existing 32-bit software. Intel did not view this as a problem because its target market was pure 64-bit applications. In 2002 Intel shipped 100,000 Itanium chips. AMD took a less revolutionary approach and offered a dual purpose chip. AMD designed a backwardly compatible 64 bit extension to the x86 instruction set architecture called x86-64. The x86-64 also doubled the number of general purpose and SSE registers to 16. AMD supports a legacy mode that runs legacy (16- or 32-bit) operating systems, a compatibility mode executing existing 32-bit applications without recompilation under a 64-bit operating system and a 64-bit mode that requires an application to be compiled for 64-bit execution. The last two modes can be executing simultaneously. In compatibility mode 32-bit applications run at full speed in hardware without emulation. The AMD approach leverages the large installed base of x86 hardware and makes it attractive to ISV's. With compatibility mode there is less porting time, testing time and performance tuning than retargeting to exploit 64-bit architecture. Of course the 32-bit applications will not run any faster and will still have a 4 gigabyte memory limitation. During the keynote speech at the Intel Developers Forum in mid February Intel CEO Craig Barrett announced that new Xeons and future Prescott-based CPUs will support the same 64-bit software as AMD's existing Athlon 64 and Opteron chips. And like those AMD chips, the new Intel CPUs will continue to support 32-bit apps. Intel will phase in the chips over time. By mid-2004, Intel will issue next-generation, dual-processor-capable Xeon chips (Nacona) with 64-bit extensions aimed at server and workstation markets. By late-2004, Intel will ship 64-bit Pentium 4 chips (Prescott), aimed at the workstation and desktop markets. In early 2005, Intel will ship 4-processor-capable Xeon (Potomac) versions. The company will continue to develop and market the Itanium family for high-end server needs. Barrett noted that Microsoft and various Linux vendors will support Intel's new architecture in the second half of 2004. Benchmarks show superior performance and lower cost for Linux PCs versus UNIX based workstations. Leading EDA vendors have previously announced support for 64-bit personal computers running under Linux ( Red Hat Enterprise Linux Chosen for Electronic Design Automation ). In January Cadence announced support for 64-bit Linux Based on AMD64 and on Itanium 2-Based Platforms to offer customers the increased capacity and higher performance critical for designing the largest and most complex SoC designs. Last November Synopsys Announced Support for AMD64 Architecture . Last September Mentor Graphics announced DFT Support for AMD Opteron Processors and AMD64 . Also last September Magma announced porting of all products to 64-bit Opteron. The EDA Consortium is the international association of companies that provide tools and services that enable engineers to create the world's electronic products. The organization publishes recommendation for operating system support over time. This OS Roadmap recommends Red Enterprise Linux 3 from April 2004 through May 2006 and Red Enterprise Linux 4 from May 2005 through TBD for support of 64-bit computing on both Itanium 2 and AMD64 architectures. Consult their website www.eda.org/resources_roadmap.jsp for the support plans of its members. In conversation with Karen Bartleson, Director of Interoperability at Synopsys, I learned that Synopsys takes an annual platform survey of their customer base. Last October the response to the survey question: "What percent of your EDA jobs require 64-bit addressing?", none said less than 10%, 80% said that less than 45% required 64-bit addressing and 5% said more than 75% of jobs require 64-bit addressing. Karen anticipates that the use of 64-bit addressing will continue to increase. For the question "What is your number one EDA platform", the same survey reported 70% UNIX and 30% Linux. The responders said that next year the answer would be Linux 58% and UNIX 30%. Karen also said that large designs simply will not run in a 32-bit environment, which is why Synopsys has for some time supported 64-bit processing in both the UNIX and Linux worlds. In conversation with Eric Filseth, Cadence VP Marketing Digital IC Implementation, he said that demand for 64-bit computing has been intense from those dealing with large designs. Large designs will not fit in a 32-bit environment. The performance of core computational processing if one is forced to go to disk is simply unacceptable. Given that Cadence announced support for 64-bit Linux only in January the vast majority of 64-bit users are on UNIX. On a percentage basis he guesstimated that 90% of Cadence seats are still 32-bit. He believes that customers will typical have a few 64-bit servers for executing the more complex jobs but use 32-bit platforms for the desktop. Eric feels that customers prefer to use 32-bit machine if the design will fit. There is a perception that it will run faster there. He also estimated that three quarters of users are on UNIX versus one quarter on Linux. But Linux usage is growing fast. There is a customer perception of superior performance and lower cost of ownership. Like many vendors Cadence ships software in a form that can be used in multiple environments making it difficult to know exactly what the customers are really using. Support for 64-bit computing under Linux is available from most leading computer vendors. For example, HP and Intel actually co-developed the Itantium IA-64 architecture based upon more than a decade of research work at HP-Labs. On February 24th HP and AMD announced the introduction of AMD Opteron processor-based systems in the HP ProLiant server family. The two companies have agreed to work together to drive next-generation server capabilities through a multi-year purchasing, marketing and technology collaboration agreement. At the recent Intel Developers Forum Shane Robison, HP Chief strategy and technology officer, said "Building upon HP's rich history of innovation with Intel across the IA-32 and Itanium platforms, we will offer customers solutions utilizing the Intel Itanium 2 processors as well as Intel Xeon processors with 64-bit extension technology to provide the best performance, availability and scalability in the market". For an informative article consult The power of Linux applications built on the IntelR ItaniumR architecture white paper . LINUX Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Versions 1.0 of the Linux kernel was released in 1994. Over the years, Linux has gathered the support of 1000s of kernel, application and documentation developers. Today Linux has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged UNIX, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management, and TCP/IP networking. In 2002 IDC forecast that the CAGR for Linux revenue would be 29.3% ending at $291 million in 2006. The CAGR for revenue shipments would be 18% for both servers and clients. For 2006 IDC forecast nearly 12,500 new revenue shipments with clients accounting for 70% of those shipments. IDC also predicts 27% CAGR for free Linux shipments during this time period with 12,000 shipments in 2006. A 2002 European survey by OpenForum Europe found that 49% of CIOs in financial services, retail, and the public sector expect to be using Open Source software and 37% already are. The perceived benefits included decreased costs in general (54%), lower software license cost (24%), better control over development (22%), and improved security (22%). Another example of highly successful open source software is the Apache web server. According to Netcraft's Web Survey of over 48 million sites in March Apache has a 67% share versus Microsoft's IIS 21% share. Since October 2002 Apache market share has grown from 53% to a 23% gain while Microsoft IIS has shrunk from 36% a 15% decline. Who is in charge of Linux? For the kernel Linus Torvalds is in charge. Linux developers are self-organized into specific subsystems defined by a developer's interests and technical expertise. Each of these subsystems has a domain expert developer, the "maintainer", who oversees the work of others. Subsystem maintainers review the code submitted to them and arrange broad peer review of code to ensure its quality. Torvalds maintains the "development kernel" where new features and bug fixes are tested. Andrew Morton maintains the "production kernel" which is the version release for public use. Torvalds is the final arbiter of what is included in Linux. All Linux code, both the current version and that submitted for future inclusion, is available on-line for public examination. This allows literally thousands of interested parties to scrutinize submitted code in what amounts to a massive code review. There are any number of organization, publications and websites dedicated in some way to the development and/or promotion of Linux. For example, the Open Systems Development Labs (OSDL) - now home to Linus Torvalds - is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise. Founded in 2000 and supported by a global consortium of IT industry leaders, OSDL is a non-profit organization that provides state-of the-art computing and test facilities in the United States and Japan available to developers around the world. OSDL's founding members are IBM, HP, CA, Intel, and NEC. The OSDL mission is to be the recognized center of gravity for Linux; the central body dedicated to accelerating the use of Linux for enterprise computing. Creating and selling Linux distributions has become a multi-million dollar business. Boxed version of Linux are available from companies such as Red Hat, SuSE, MandrakeSoft and others. One can also download Linux from any number of websites. There are distributions of all types and for practically any kind of computing endeavor. There are a wide range of open source projects developing applications for Linux including desktop management systems such as KDE and GNOME, office suite projects such as OpenOffice.org and web browser projects such as Mozilla. Linux Vendors Founded in 1993, Red Hat is a leading Linux and open source provider. The company's first product Red Hat Linux now has two descendants: Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Fedora Project. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the solution that provides a robust, stable operating system supported by Red Hat, Inc. and a wide variety of ISVs. The Fedora Project is an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for general participation, led by a meritocracy, following a set of project objectives. Red Hat went public in 1999. For the fiscal year ended February 29, 2004, the company reported revenues of $126 million, an increase of 39% as compared to fiscal 2003. The company reported net income of $14 million compared to a net loss of $6.6 million for fiscal 2003. Two thirds of the revenue was from subscription and one third from services. Renewal rate was ~90%. The company reported over 160,000 cumulative sales of Red Hat Enterprise Linux technologies since the launch in March 2003. Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports 5 distinct processor architectures, namely Intel x86 compatible, Itanium, AMD64, IBM Power PC and IBM Mainframe. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux family has 3 members: the AS ("Advanced Server") supports all five processor architecture, the ES ("entry/mid server") only the Intel x86 and WS ("workstation") the three non-IBM architectures. A customer configurations might well involves a mixture of all three. In addition Red Hat offers a number of layered applications such as a developers' suite, content management, portal server and web application framework. Products are sold through a subscription model. Red Hat had announced that after six years it would cease support of its current free distribution as of Dec 2004. In September 2003 Red Hat launched the Fedora Project to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from open source software Red Hat will not provide any formal Web or phone support for The Fedora Project. SUSE LINUX AG was founded in 1992 in Germany. SUSE offers software solutions and turnkey systems for the deployment of Linux in the enterprise as well as operating systems and application software for private customers. The company supports its business customers with an extensive range of qualified consulting, training, and support services. SUSE's product and service portfolio includes the design and implementation of Open Source IT infrastructures, Internet connections, security concepts, and data management. SUSE LINUX guarantees the full platform independence of its products. SUSE claims an install base of 15 million private and professional Linux users. SUSE LINUX has developed the AutoBuild process, a certifiable production workflow that enables the delivery of new product versions and product platforms as well as quality-assured patches and bug fixes. Currently, SUSE LINUX AG hosts about 380 employees at six national and four international locations. SUSE Linux has formed service partnerships with the likes of IBM Global Services, SAP, HP Services and Fujitsu Siemens Computers. In early November 2003 Novell announced an agreement to acquire SUSE Linux for $210 million in cash. The transaction was completed in January. On the same day Novell also announced that IBM intends to make a $50 million investment in Novell convertible preferred stock. Free Software? Linux is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL grants the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's code or any program derived from it but only if the distribution terms (source code availability) are unchanged. This is often referred to as Copyleft. The GNU Project was launched in 1984 to develop a complete Unix-like operating system which is free software. From the GNU.org website: "Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer." Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software: 0. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. 1. The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. 2. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor. 3. The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits. SCO Lawsuit SCO Group, inheritor of the intellectual property for the UNIX operating system, has sued IBM for more than $1 billion, alleging Big Blue misappropriated SCO's Unix technology and built it into Linux. SCO has been threatening Linux users since last May, when it sent 1,500 of the world's largest enterprises (one third of Fortune 500) warnings letters about their Linux use. On March 3, 2004 SCO announced that it had filed suit against Linux end user AutoZone its alleged violations of SCO's UNIX copyrights and that it would file suit on March 4 against DaimlerChrysler for unspecified damages for alleged violations of its UNIX software agreement with SCO. Enterprise Linux users have been guaranteed support from most of the vendors and the key industry players in the event they are sued by SCO. The threat of legal action against a Linux user has prompted a spate of indemnification plans from the major vendors. HP, Novell and Red Hat have announced programs to protect their Linux customers. But IBM is holding firm to its plan to not indemnify its Linux customers. Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have recently bought SCO licenses. Legal maneuvers by one side or the other are an almost a weekly occurrence. Mechanical CAD, CAM, CAE Systems and 64-bit computing As an aside, let's review the platform support provided by the parallel Mechanical CAD industry. CADAM and CATIA began as mainframe applications. CADAM was ported to an IBM personal computer especially designed for the Japanese market with extra memory and graphic capabilities. This version, called Mirco Cadam, was for some time the leading mechanical CAD product in Japan. . CATIA was ported to an IBM workstation by Dassault Systemes. IBM was the exclusive marketing and sales channel for CATIA. CATIA was later ported to other UNIX workstations. A majority of CATIA users are still on UNIX at CATIA V4. In 2003 Dassault introduced an architectural re-write rather than a port of CATIA labeled CATIA V5 which ran on both UNIX and Windows. However, it took several years after its introduction before CATIA V5 supported the full breadth (dozens of modules) and depth (feature set) of the CATIA V4 offering. The other early leading CAD vendors offered both proprietary hardware and software in a minicomputer environment. ComputerVision developed its own hardware while Applicon, Calma, McAuto and Intergraph OEM'ed boards from DEC and DG. The companies had their own hardware field support organizations. Autodesk's AutoCAD product began as a DOS application on the IBM PC. This was later migrated to Windows and the DOS version was dropped after a few subsequent releases despite objections from the installed base. For a short time AutoCAD had a UNIX offering but withdrew the product. PTC and SDRC began as workstation product lines on commercial off-the shelf hardware from DEC, Apollo, HP, SUN and SGI. This time there was no hardware content. Both now offer Windows versions. In February 2003 PTC announced Pro/E Wildfire and only this product's availability on 32-bit Linux in partnership with HP. SolidWorks and SolidEdge were introduced as Windows compliant solid modeling systems. There were never any UNIX versions. Parasolids the kernel modeler of the UGS PLM is available under Linux. The major system requirement of MCAD system is high end graphics for color shaded images, animations and for visualizations of analysis results such as stress contours and mode shapes. Solid modeling data bases are double precision (64-bit) while some older 2D data bases are single precision. In importing the single precision data into solid modeling systems, some have experienced problems due to lack of precision. Lines that share end points and shape boundaries that appear closed in 2D on the screen and even when plotted don't within the tolerances required by 3D systems. Letter to the Editor In your recent Bits & Bytes discussion with Dale Pollek, CEO of Chip MD, he is quoted as saying that analog and mixed-signal design teams are only doing a subset of the analysis that is needed. If they are using traditional SPICE tools then they will not have the speed or capacity they need to simulate todays complex designs across a wide range of operating conditions. Designers have tried using the 1st generation of fast SPICE simulators which have improved speed and capacity but with little success. They were digital-centric tools built on event-driven solvers and simplified device models, but they were incapable of accurately reproducing analog behavior. Nassda's hierarchical fast-SPICE circuit simulator does not suffer from these deficiencies and enables designers to do complete analysis of complex designs. We've found that many users of our next generation HSIM simulator are benefiting from the speed, capacity, and accuracy it provides for analog and mixed-signal circuits. Our proprietary analog detection methods and hierarchical solver allow users to analyze designs with SPICE accuracy that were infeasible in the past with "fast SPICE" tools. At the 2002 International Cadence Usergroup Conference, Cliff Weiner, et al, of Motorola reported that HSIM matched Spectre simulation results on a 10-bit ADC while consuming one-sixth of the CPU time. You can find this report at http://www.nassda.com/Wiener.pdf, and learn more about the experiences of analog and mixed-signal designers at companies like ST Microelectronics, Intersil, and National Semiconductor by reviewing the technical articles and customer quotes at www.nassda.com . Mike Demler Product Marketing Manager Nassda Corporation Weekly Industry News Highlights Cadence to Acquire Neolinear; Neolinear Technology to Accelerate Design Cycle and Enhance Silicon Yield Nassda Launches HSIMplus Platform Cadence and MIPS Technologies Deliver Encounter Reference Methodology for Industry's Highest Performance 32-Bit Core Family MIPS Technologies and Synopsys Announce Galaxy(TM) Design Platform Reference Flow for High Performance 24K(TM) Core Family Altera's MAX II Devices Are the Fastest CPLDs Ever Toshiba Takes NAND Flash Memory to 4-Gigabit Level Using 90 Nanometer Process Technology Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Sales Experienced a 10 Percent Increase in 2003 More EDA in the News and More IP & SoC News Upcoming Events... --Contributing Editors can be reached by clicking here . You are registered as: [dolinsky@gsu.by]. CafeNews is a service for EDA professionals. EDACafe respects your online time and Internet privacy. To change your newsletter's details, including format and frequency, or to discontinue this service, please navigate to . If you have questions about EDACafe services, please send email to edaadmin@ibsystems.com . Copyright c 2004, Internet Business Systems, Inc. - 11208 Shelter Cove, Smithfield, VA 23420 - 888-44-WEB-44 - All rights reserved.