EDA in IBM: Past, present, and future

Throughout its history, from the early four-circuit gate-array chips of the late 1960s to today's billion-transistor multichip module, IBM has investe d in tools to support its leading-edge technology and high-performance prod uct development. The combination of demanding designs and close cooperation among product, technology, and tool development has given rise to many inn ovations in the electronic design automation (EDA) area and provided IBM wi th a significant competitive advantage. This paper highlights IBM's contrib utions over the last four decades and presents a view of the future, where the best methods of multimillion gate ASIC and gigahertz microprocessor des ign are converged to enable highly productive system-on-a-chip designs that include widely diverse hardware and software components.