PCB CAD

OK.... after all that wuffle about the distinction twix open source and shareware, give me one well known organisation using "open source" PCB layout tools on mission critical projects...?

I'm waiting.............!

Prescott

Reply to
Don Prescott
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Don Prescott wrote: : OK.... after all that wuffle about the distinction twix open source : and shareware, give me one well known organisation using "open source" : PCB layout tools on mission critical projects...?

: I'm waiting.............!

I apologize for not responding sooner; I have been traveling, and away from the net for a while.

Asking about EDA for "mission-critical" applications make you sound like a marketing flack for one of the various EDA companies. Are you trying to spread a little FUD by implying that free/open-source tools aren't up to the hypothetically exacting demands of a Fortune-500 company working on massive projects, and that you can therefore dismiss them out of hand?

*chuckle*

Let's be clear: What is the current market segment served by gEDA, PCB, Icarus, and other F/OSS EDA projects? These tools are written

*for*, and used *by* folks at the low and middle segments of the CAD marketplace. They are ideal for students, hobbiests, educators, and small-time consultants -- a market segment which has been badly served by the EDA vendors (who offer bad service, ridiculously high prices, and buggy products). Right now, F/OSS tools are workable replacements for things like Circuit Maker and Electronics Workbench. Indeed, if you want to do a multi-page design with little or no hierarchy, and lay it out as a 4 or 6 layer board, you might have previously used one of these apps, or even Orcad or Protel. Now, for this kind of job you can use gEDA instead.

As for "mission critical" designs: Do Fortune 500 companies use Circuit Maker or EWB for "mission critical" designs? No way. Is Protel capable of "mission critical" projects? That's debatable at best -- my experience with it was that it was buggy and flakey, but with enough swearing & futzing around you could ultimately get the job done anyway.

Therefore, your question of whether the F/OSS apps are ready for "mission-critical" design is a red herring; none of the apps which serve the low to middle market segment are really "mission critical".

Note that with the gEDA suite (which is generally less buggy than Protel, by the way), you can not only get the job done, but the program is free, offers ASCII file formats, legacy design protection, and is unencumbered by licencing restrictions. *That's* the important take-away point.

Now, are people using open-source EDA for low and mid-level projects? Yes. Here are some public examples:

Ronja free space optical link:

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D. Harmon's Single Board Computer:

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Mikey Sklar's electric clothing:

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ESNUG -- DeepChip website:

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(about 1/2 way down there is a mention of Icarus Verilog used at InformASIC.)

These are the publically announced projects which I am personally aware of without doing a Google search. If you Google around, you will find others. Also, I am aware of some people using gEDA & Icarus in "stealth mode" inside larger corporations. However, it's not up to me to give away their identity, so I am sorry that I cannot provide any backing to this assertion. I realize this is unsatisfying.

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That's the present. What about the future? Consider again the advantages offered by gEDA and other F/OSS apps:

  • Open-source.
  • Documented ASCII file formats.
  • Legacy design protection.
  • They don't tie you up in licencing knots.
  • Download is free. These advantages are important to practicing engineers, but are antithetical to the interests of commercial EDA vendors, who need to find ways to lock down their customers and then squeeze money from them by every device available. Consequently, it is unlikely that the commercial EDA vendors will be able to offer the same features. Therefore, they can't compete against the F/OSS stuff in the long run, at least on these parameters.

Meanwhile, as more and more people become aware of F/OSS EDA projects like gEDA, the projects will acquire developers, who will fix more bugs, introduce more features, create more apps, and so on. So, on one hand, the commercial vendors have frozen development of their low-end stuff (because low-end CAD is commoditized & doesn't make money), and will not meaningfully implement any of the above features which are important to engineers. On the other hand, the F/OSS stuff will continue to grow. I think you can see where it will end up.

At the high end, however, it's another story. At the high end, the EDA vendors & VCs interested in EDA have lots of money to lavish on research & development of new tools and algorithms. The F/OSS guys don't have the time, resources, or interest to compete at this level. Therefore, I don't expect to see people using PCB instead of Allegro or Mentor Expedition any time soon. However, for low and mid-level size designs -- the bread and butter of students, hobbiests, and small consultants -- I fully expect to see gEDA and other F/OSS applications take over the market place over the next decade, simply because the commercial EDA vendors won't & can't compete.

Stuart

Reply to
Stuart Brorson

Re........

These tools are written

You wrote an awful lotta stuff, but then agreed with what I said... YES, open source CAD applications are probably OK for "students, hobbiests, educators, and small-time consultants". Generally speaking, nobody uses these sort of products when you need to get a commercial product out the door.....(mission critical). Why not...???? 'cos you're much more concerned with the $$$KKK than playing around with some home-grown piece of code...

Oh.... please don't tell me about apache and linux (again), thems was never what I was talking about...

Prescott

Reply to
Don Prescott

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:33:29 +0000, Stuart Brorson wrote:

It's interesting to compare the EDA market with the embedded software development tools market, which is closely related. The difference is that there is not so much in the way of seriously high-end, high-price software development tools (you would be hard pushed to spend a budget of $20,000 for one target - except perhaps for some emulator hardware), and there are more users, especially at the low end. The market is also a bit more mature in many ways (perhaps because of the larger number of users), and I think might give an indication of the future in the EDA market.

In particular, there are high-end tools, with compilers from Green Hills, Diab Data, Metrowerks and the like - these are the best compilers/debuggers that money can buy, and clearly outclass the cheap and free tools. These vendors have learned to live with open-source software, and compete against it on quality, support and features, combined with supporting it (such as supporting embedded linux targets). At the mid-range, companies like IAR have a certain stable base (their key selling point is a wide range of support for targets), but I don't think their future is solid. A few years ago, microcontroller vendors would work closely with IAR on new architectures, and support them as their "official" compiler - the market is now rebelling against that, starting from the low-end but working up. Companies like Atmel and Texas Instruments listen when users say they would buy their chips if they had a wider range of tools available, and you now see links to gcc ports on vendors web sites. In addition to the growing inroads made by open source software here, there is also a growth market in "cheap and cheerful" tools. These vendors specialise in making software that is easy to use and providing great support. Typically they are low on features, and technically mediocore (in terms of optimisations, for example) - but that doesn't matter much to their market. I can imagine this sort of market growing significantly in the EDA world too.

There is another big advantage of open source tools - they are useful for other vendors. As an example, look at Altera and their tools for FPGA design and especially for their Nios II soft processor. Instead of re-inventing the wheel, or buying in proprietry technology, they use tcl and perl extensively for scripting. The do at least as good a job as any proprietry scripting language, are well-known, and are free - important if you want to be able to give away free, limited copies of your software. When they made their Nios processor, instead of writing a compiler toolkit from scratch, or working with a big commercial vendor, they ported gcc. This gave them a solid basis to work with. When they wanted an IDE, the started with eclipse and wrote some plug-ins. I can also imagine this sort of thing becoming more common in the EDA world - if I wanted to sell a new simulator program, I'd bundle it with gEDA to form a complete package. Sure, I'd make sure it would work nicely with Protel and Mentor and all the other major commercial packages - but it would give me a head start for little effort.

Reply to
David

You are the one who has been generalising about all open source software being inferior to commercial products, with comments such as "Who in there [sic] right mind would consider using an open source wordprocessing package or spreadsheets instead of the commercial products like Word and Excel". As long as you continue to mix in such absurd claims, you'll get appropriate counter-claims.

There are relatively few people who have the money to buy top commercial EDA applications and yet choose to use open source software - no one is disputing that. But there are a few such users, and the base is growing along with the quality and usefulness of gEDA and friends. Projects such as linux, apache and open office make it perfectly clear that, in general, open source software can be at least as good (and often far better) than commercial software. Successful companies like MySQL demonstrate that it is possible to make a good business from making and selling open source software. How successful open source software will be in the EDA market remains to be seen - it is likely to make increasing inroads at the low end, with little effect at the high end.

Reply to
David

Are we really discussing whether open source is a viable option for mission critical development?

Has anyone ever used emacs to write source code to tape out a chip, or write a line of C++ or assembler for a shipped executable? And how would that C++ have been compiled, nobody uses a GNU compiler right? How many boards, chips, executables can anyone really ship without touching an open source tool along the way? I bet there aren't that many.

Check out the Altera website. They have 14,000 (paying) customers and made over $800 million last year. Or the Xilinx website. A swarthy group of "mission critical" customers gave them 1.4 billion last year. Each of them _ship_ cygwin and GCC as part of their development flow. Last I checked, those tools are open source.

I have an idea - just the one, I'm good for one a day and this is it. Rather than throwing rocks, why don't the folks who think closed source is a good idea try rationalizing it. Make a case for it - what are it's inherit benefits? How are customers better off when they use it? Stop making a case against open source development - it's not worth your time, right? Start making a case _for_ closed source.

If we all listened when someone said, "you can't do that", we'd never do anything.

Chris

D> Re........

CAD

and

Reply to
info

and

year.

The theme is PCB CAD matey ? YES, I know all about FPGA design tools... Altera and Xilinx's interest is in selling FPGAs NOT in selling tools. They give away the design tools so you buy their hardware. This wasn't what we were arguing about... Show me a well known company using open source PCB CAD tools on mainstream $$$$KKKK projects....not file servers! not FPGA! PCB CAD

Prescott

Reply to
Don Prescott

I'd rather hear you make a compelling case for using closed source tools.

I heard you the first 10 times when you said, "open source PCB sucks".

Now let's hear from you why close source PCB CAD is so great.

Chris

D> >Check out the Altera website. They have 14,000 (paying) customers

flow.

Reply to
info

sucks".

In any of the messages have you seen me use the term "open source PCB sucks"....?

What I am saying is that in commercial organisations the EDA tools are a means to an end only; a link in the chain leading to the final production product. These organisations buy products that are ready to use, reliable, and are supported. How to you think Cadence brings in $1billion a year...? A hard-node, skunkwork, Engineering VP is unlikely to be interested in considering an open source solution if a commercial product is available. AND they are available at all sorts of prices. Nowadays, quality PCB CAD products can be purchased for several hundred dollars.

If you say I'm wrong then OK show me well known companies that do use open source PCB CAD solutions for their mainstream PCB design operation. AND PLEASE don't come back with words or phrases I haven't used, or refer to non-PCB CAD apps like FPGA or file servers.

Prescott

Reply to
Don Prescott

Most humble apologies for the ruffling of feathers ;) Clearly it was unfair treatment to say that your posts suggested you thought Open Source PCB software "sucks".

I am glad that you do not think it "sucks", however let me point out some of the things you said, verbatim that IMHO indicate to the broader audience that you think it does "suck":

-"raw, unsupported, buggy, pieces of software "

-"Useless if you're trying to design a real product that's gotta go out the door on time"

You are correct. You did not say it sucks.

My bad.

Chris

D> >I'd rather hear you make a compelling case for using closed source

PCB

are

haven't

Reply to
info
[OT Question] Why do you keep starting new threads, rather than continuing posting in the same thread?

Several of your messages could be summed up as saying "all open source software sucks, and no commercial organisation would use them for something important, especially not pcb design".

If you are happy now to retract your previous claims regarding open source software in general, and concentrate on specifically pcb design software, then that's fair enough. As someone who does schematic design, pcb design, fpga development and embedded systems programming, I have a tendancy to lump together a lot more under the heading "EDA" than just pcb design.

Only a half-wit, PHB would not consider using an open source solution. I think in the case of pcb design software, as it stands today, few (outside the very lowest budget users, or those with particular requirements for openness) would choose it simply because there are commercial packages that provide a better solution for most uses. In the future, as the open source packages develope, then who knows which will make the most sense?

My point is not that there are open source pcb design tools available today that are a good choice for a commercial organisation - they are not currently suitable for my own uses, and I doubt if they are suitable for more than a small percentage of users. It is merely that the idea of dismissing open source software out of hand simply because there are commercial alternatives is absurd - it's an old-fashioned and out of date prejudice that is being repeatedly proven unwise in other software fields.

Reply to
David

continuing

Cos' Google says it can't retrieve the original message

source

You're twisting my words and adding your own .....yet again!! I don't use or like phrases that have a sexual connotations like "sucks", so PLEASE don't attribute them,in any way, to me...

source

software,

just pcb

What is the subject called..."PCB CAD"....! What is this special interest group...... "electronics CAD"...Is it about servers and apps in general...No!

solution. I

the

will

Dunno what PHB means.... but at least you agree with what I've been saying...

not

for

date

fields.

In conclusion, I very much doubt that open source PCB CAD will be of interest to many commercial operations for a considerable time yet.

Prescott

Reply to
Don Prescott

don't

Cute. You're right, you never used sexual innuendo in your words here:

-"raw, unsupported, buggy, pieces of software "

-"Useless if you're trying to design a real product that's gotta go out the door on time"

For the record, I intended no sexual connotation by the remark "sucks". If you choose to view it that way, that is your right.

For the time being, I agree to disagree - I'm not even sure what you're arguing about any more.

Reply to
info

Strange... I haven't used google for posting, so I wouldn't know. Isn't it easier to use a newsreader program?

Ok - I'm happy to agree that you never used such a word. But most people here don't read "sucks" as having any sexual connotation, but is simply an insulting way of saying something is bad - much like calling software "crashware", and other choice phrases that you *did* use.

I agree - but other apps turned up in the context of your claiming that all open source software was inferior, so counter-examples are perfectly valid.

"Pointy Hair Boss" - are you an engineer who doesn't read Dilbert?? A PHB is a manager with no understanding of what he is managing, and typically believes ideas such as that you have to pay for software so that you have someone to sue if it doesn't work (have you ever read a software license? You can sue the supplier if the CD is scratched or the pages fall out of the manual within 3 months, and that's about it).

I agree mostly, but probably for a shorter interpretation of "considerable".

Reply to
David

Hello, Don,

I know of one aerospace company currently developing their next range of boards using FreePCB. They key for them is that they can get the source, the fact that it is also free is immaterial, though naturally they are delighted it's free, if a little incredulous. Now that their eyes have been opened to open-source, a snowball effect is in motion, they are very keen to get hold of open-source DSP software.

I suspect that at the current moment in time there are very few companies using open source PCB layout tools, though as in so many other areas of development, there is an inexorable drift toward open-source software: it's the source that counts.

Happy xmas, Tim.

Reply to
Tim

Hi Tim

Re:

of >boards using FreePCB. They key for them is that they can get the source, the >fact that it is also free is immaterial, though naturally they are delighted >it's free, if a little incredulous. Now that their eyes have been opened to >open-source, a snowball effect is in motion, they are very keen to get hold >of open-source DSP software.

companies >using open source PCB layout tools, though as in so many other areas of >development,there is an inexorable drift toward open-source software: it's >the source that counts.

Oh yes...... "you know an Aerospace company that uses open source PCB CAD" do you..?

This has the hallmarks of an urban myth. The term "Aerospace company" conjures images of maybe Boeing, Grumman, or perhaps Lockheed... and in the next retelling it will become one of these organisations..

OK what Aerospace company..??

Prescott

Reply to
Don Prescott

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