| ▲ | skissane 6 hours ago | |
> Regenerating the cell layout was very costly, taking many hours on an IBM mainframe computer. I would love to know more about this – how much info is publicly available on how Intel used mainframes to design the 386? Did they develop their own software, or use something off-the-shelf? And I'm somewhat surprised they used IBM mainframes, instead of something like a VAX. | ||
| ▲ | kens 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
Various papers describe the software, although they are hard to find. My earlier blog post goes into some detail: https://www.righto.com/2024/01/intel-386-standard-cells.html The 386 used a placement program called Timberwolf, developed by a Berkeley grad student and a proprietary routing tool. Also see "Intel 386 Microprocessor Design and Development Oral History Panel" page 13. https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Hist... "80386 Tapeout: Giving Birth to an Elephant" by Pat Gelsinger, Intel Technology Journal, Fall 1985, discusses how they used an Applicon system for layout and an IBM 3081 running UTS unix for chip assembly, faster than the VAX they used earlier. Timberwolf also ran on the 3081. "Design And Test of the 80386" (https://doi.org/10.1109/MDT.1987.295165) describes some of the custom software they used, including a proprietary RTL simulator called Microsim, the Mossim switch-level simulator, and the Espresso PLA minimizer. | ||
| ▲ | retrac 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
VAX were relatively small computers for the time. They grew upward in the late 80s eventually rivalling the mainframes for speed (and cost). But in the early 80s IBM's high end machines were an entire order of magnitude larger. Top of the line VAX in 1984 was the 8600 with a 12.5 MHz internal clock, doing about 2 million instructions per second. IBM 3084 from 1984 - quad SMP (four processors) at 38 MHz internal clock, about 7 million instructions per second, per processor. Though the VAX was about $50K and the mainframe about $3 million. | ||
| ▲ | themafia 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
There's not a lot of "off the shelf" in terms of mainframes. You're usually buying some type of contract. In that case I would expect a lot of direct support for customer created modules that took an existing software library and turned into the specific application they required. | ||
| ▲ | f1shy 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
> Did they develop their own software Knowing intel SW and based on it was succesful, I really doubt it | ||