Re: Not for me.

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net>]

Yaro Kasear wrote:
> On 03/04/2013 08:48 PM, Doug wrote:
> > Another program, which I used until I retired in 2002 was EEsof's 
> > Touchstone. An extremely expensive RF cad program, it worked with 
> > netlist inputs.
>
> I'm trying to understand what you're meaning on the Touchstone 
> software... what feature exactly did it have that the billions of 
> other CAD tools don't? I don't know what "netlist" is.

"netlist" is a term of art in electronic design automation - essentially 
a way to represent connectivity in a textual form (think graph database) 
- or put another way, after you draw a pretty schematic in a graphical 
editor, it has to be represented somehow for storage and processing -- 
before we had nice graphical editors, you simply translated paper 
drawings into netlists, directly

example, from EDIF (Electronic Design Interchange Format) by way of 
Wikipedia:

(edif fibex(edifVersion2  0  0)
  (edifLevel0)  (keywordMap(keywordLevel0))
  (status(written(timeStamp1995  1  1  1  1  1)  (program"xxx"  (version"v1"))))
  (library xxx(edifLevel0)
    (technology(numberDefinition(scale1  (e1  -6)  (unit distance))))
    (cell dff_4(cellType generic)
      (view view1(viewType netlist)
        (interface
          (port aset(direction INPUT))
          (port clok(direction INPUT))
    ...
    (cell yyy(cellType generic)
      (view schematic_(viewType netlist)
        (interface
          (port CLEAR(direction INPUT))
          (port CLOCK(direction INPUT))  ...  )
        (contents
           (instance I_36_1(viewRef view1(cellRef dff_4)))
           (instance(rename I_36_3"I$3")  (viewRef view1(cellRef addsub_4)))
           ...
           (net CLEAR
             (joined
               (portRef CLEAR)
                 (portRef aset(instanceRef I_36_1))
                 (portRef aset(instanceRef I_36_3))))


Miles Fidelman


--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra