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If you want to light a fire in a marketeer's eyes, mention that you'd like to talk about a win-win situation for all involved. Everybody wins. What a concept! What a deal! Unfortunately, designers usually don't have an opportunity to enjoy such arrangements. As engineers and technicians, we are bound by laws of nature that invariably require us to give up something in order to receive something else; Matter for energy, power efficiency for performance and sanity for a paycheck.
So it is with a shameless amount of handwringing that I enjoy Microsoft's release of NT and the accompanying offensive against the sacred workstation/Unix ground of EDA tools. Based on my worms-eye view, I am inclined to say that NT is arguably the most significant software development in the EDA vendor and user communities in the last five years, perhaps even the last 10.
It's going to be great for us user types. Even if it's a technical failure. Even if OS/2 picks up market share by attracting those turned off by the inevitable version 1.0 glitches. Even if you have a pin-filled Bill Gates Voodoo doll in your desk drawer, have "Live to Script, Script to Live" tattooed in an intimate place, and (as a true mark of Unix mastery) have successfully edited a file using vi.
How will this be accomplished? By bringing enhanced competition to a market area that has sorely needed it--not competition among products--but rather, competition between design environments that offer additional and more concise choices in performance and price.
Let me state upfront that I am not predicting the demise of Unix, or its use in EDA in particular. Except for the "v word" and the amusing contradiction of support for long file names and a convention of very short and hence cryptic command names, I actually like Unix. And when EDA tools run on a competent workstation, they may make PC-based systems scurry for a dark place to hide. I do...