Electric (software)
| Company type | Software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronic design automation |
| Founded | 1980 |
| Founder | Steven M. Rubin |
| Products | Electric VLSI Design System |
| Owner | Free Software Foundation |
| Parent | GNU Project |
The Electric VLSI Design System is an EDA application created in the early 1980s by Steven M. Rubin. This tool streamlines the development of logic wire schematics and the examination of integrated circuit layouts. It accommodates hardware description languages such as VHDL and Verilog, and features utilities for design rule checking, simulation, routing, Layout vs. Schematic, and logical effort evaluation.
Implemented in Java, Electric was made available under the GNU General Public License as a component of the GNU project in 1998. Although active development halted in 2017, ongoing maintenance and bug resolution continue to be provided.
Alternative design style for integrated circuits
Electric diverges from conventional integrated circuit (IC) design tools that manipulate polygons on wafer layers by treating IC layout as interconnected circuitry, akin to schematic capture software. Users position nodes (such as transistors and contacts) and link them with arcs (wires), which introduces both unique benefits and challenges.
One benefit is that circuits are always extracted, facilitating accelerated topology-dependent processes like Layout vs. Schematic verification and simulation. The schematic-capture-inspired interface delivers a uniform experience across IC layout and schematic design tasks. Moreover, the nodes-and-arcs framework enables designers to impose layout constraints on arcs, effectively allowing the layout to be "programmed" to preserve connectivity during modifications.
Nevertheless, this methodology necessitates training because it may be unfamiliar to seasoned IC layout engineers. While new users generally learn quickly, importing polygons from conventional tools proves difficult due to discrepancies in node extraction. Additionally, executing direct polygon commands is constrained by conflicts arising from the nodal representation within the software.
History
Initially developed in C during the 1980s, Electric was distributed freely among academic institutions and marketed commercially by Applicon under the name "Bravo3VLSI" in the mid-1980s.
In 1988, Electric Editor Incorporated was established to commercialize the software. Beginning in 1998, it was offered as free software by the Free Software Foundation, followed by distribution through Static Free Software starting in 2000.
Development transitioned to Sun Microsystems in 1999, culminating in a Java-based version completed in 2005 that supplanted the original C implementation by 2003.
Although active development ended in 2017, support and maintenance efforts persist.