Magic is a Very-large-scale integration layout tool originally written by John Ousterhout and his graduate students at UC Berkeley during the 1980s. Magic continues to be popular because it is free (Berkeley open-source license), easy to use, and easy to expand for specialized tasks. The current version is 7.4, but 6.x is still widely used. Magic features real-time design rule checking, something that some costly commercial VLSI design software packages don't feature. Magic implements this by counting distance using Manhattan distance rather than Euclidean distance, which is much faster to compute. Magic currently runs under Linux, although versions exist for DOS, OS/2, and other operating systems. Magic is frequently used in conjunction with irsim and other simulation programs.
References
- John K. Ousterhout, "Corner Stitching: A Data-Structuring Technique for VLSI Layout Tools," IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, Vol. CAD-3, No. 1, January 1984, pp. 87-100
- John K. Ousterhout, Gordon T. Hamachi, Robert N. Mayo, Walter S. Scott, and George S. Taylor, "Magic: A VLSI Layout System," 21st Design Automation Conference, 1984, pp. 152-159
- George S. Taylor and John K. Ousterhout, "Magic's Incremental Design-Rule Checker," 21st Design Automation Conference, 1984, pp. 160-165
- W.S. Scott and John K. Ousterhout, "Plowing: Interactive Stretching and Compaction in Magic," 21st Design Automation Conference, 1984
- Gordon T. Hamachi and John K. Ousterhout, "A Switchbox Router with Obstacle Avoidance," 21st Design Automation Conference, 1984, pp. 173-179
- Walter S. Scott and John K. Ousterhout, "Magic's Circuit Extractor," 22nd Design Automation Conference, 1985, pp. 286-292
External links
| Free software Portal |
