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Conclusion

We are very satisfied to use a set of tools of our own for teaching CMOS VLSI design for two good reasons. First, we simply can't afford 50 high end workstations to run commercial CAD systems like Compass, Mentor Graphics or Cadence. Second, both the Compass and Cadence system have been used in research project at LIP6. They are powerful and sophisticated environments but are much too complex for novice undergraduate students. The great advantage of the Alliance CAD system is that we have done our best to stick to the basic yet powerful concepts of VLSI design. To each tool correspond a unique functionnality, that cannot be changed or worked around by parameter files. At last, we experienced that the technology migration and process independence are key issues. Hence, it is crucial to rely on a portable library at the symbolic layout level.

The Alliance package is now in use all over the world, and more than 250 sites have registered today. It is available through anonymous ftp at ftp://asim.lip6.fr/pub/alliance/ distribution/, or through a Web browser at http://asim.lip6.fr/pub/alliance/ distribution/.

There is an Alliance mailing list, where users can share their views and problems, and our team is always ready to answer questions. The address of this mailing list is alliance-users@asim. lip6.fr. The support of Alliance can be joined at alliance-support@asim.lip6.fr.


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