FEL: Toped 0.9.7 released

Toped 0.9.7 has been released.

Among the new features:

• Further work on Calibre DRC visualisation. Browser supports cell name mode now.
• New utility (gds2vrml) for generation of VRML files.
• Improved memory footprint, improved TELL execution speed.
• Compressed files supported now for all input DB formats.
• Plug-in development infrastructure. Header files for a development package are released for the first time. Plug-in example will be available shortly
• TELL user library initiated and included in the distribution.
• Some new build-in TELL functions including exec renamecell etc.
• Bug fixes and stability improvements

This new release will be available shortly on fedora and EPEL testing repositories.

# yum install toped --enablerepo=updates-testing

 

Filed under: Free Electronic Lab, toped

[FEL]: Release of Toped 0.9.65

The release of Toped 0.9.65 is mainly bugfix release, although it contains also

• Improvements of the memory footprint of the database
• Number of new math TELL functions

It’s FEL package has been built and released into Fedora and EPEL repositories.

Filed under: toped

FEL: Toped 0.9.4 Stable Release

Today Toped 0.9.4 was released and pushed to Fedora repositories. This release was planned as a consolidation release. However, there are significant updates and changes.

If you are interested more about Toped in Fedora and some screenshots, please visit this blog post.

The release highlights :

• There is a certain amount of code which is not yet merged to the main development trunk – calibre error report parser. The suggestion is to do that after the release. I prefer to postpone some features instead of sacrificing stability at this stage.
• There is also a code that is already in, but not quite finished and tested yet. The suggestion here is simply not to advertise those features and where they can be hit by chance – stub the entry points.
• New graphic renderer which speeds-up the drawing up-to 3.5 times. Requires openGL version 1.4 (F-11 uses 1.3, but this is not an issue) and Virtual Buffer Objects. Will be used as a base for future graphical effects.
• The old renderer remains to cover graphic drivers implementing older openGL versions and particularly virtual desktops. The speed here is also improved significantly.
• Updates and fixes in the external interfaces. GDSII in particular.
• New utility for conversion of Virtuoso(C) technology files to TELL.
• TDT format updated with new records. Version updated to 0.7. Old Toped releases will not be able to read TDT files produced by this release. This release should handle silently both versions.
• Significant provisions on improving the GDSII conversion speed. This task together with the reducing of the memory footprint is not finished though.
• Further updates on the user interface customization – toolbars.
• Updates in the internal handling of the cell references. In result layer 0 is handled as a normal layer now.
• Many bug fixes.

Tips for the user

Toped Layout Editor can read the CIF and GDS of the Pharosc Standard Cells. Learn more about those 7 libraries standard cells on this blog post.

# yum install pharosc-magic

Below are 2 simple scripts that will help you use those standard cells by using “include” on Toped.

• cif2tdt.tll
• gds2tdt.tll

Filed under: toped

Upstream awarded: Svilen Krustev (toped)

Years back, during the time of F-7 moonshine, I contacted Svilen Krustev to share him my interest for toped‘s inclusion in Fedora repositories. Till then, he is working harder to provide a better toped source package.

A short description about toped:

Toped is a cross-platform IC layout editor supporting GDS and CIF formats. It is an open source project licensed under the GNU General Public License. Toped is driven by a build-in script interpreter. The script is designed to code and facilitate the layout generation and is used also for configuration. Automatic session recovery, undo with unlimited depth and customizable GUI are among the product features.

Toped focuses on rendering speed and quality of the screen output. The project uses the full power of OpenGL in terms of speed as well as unrestricted number of colours and fill patterns.

You might have come across a known-bug with the fedora-9 package of toped. Svilen Krustev, developing toped on Fedora, spent nights trying to understand why toped is crashing under F-9. Even though, the bug can not be fixed within toped itself there is a workaround. During F-10 development cycle, Svilen and I worked closely together and I must say, he is the ideal upstream developer a packager would dream of.

I thank Svilen in behalf of all the users of toped and I would welcome you to have a look at some screenshots of this commercial-quality VLSI Layout editor.

CentOS/RHEL users can yum download toped fedora’s EPEL testing repositories. Next month, it will be pushed to EPEL stable repositories.

I take also the opportunity to congratulate the hardwork the gEDA(+gerbv+pcb) community and ngspice revived developers. gEDA developers will soon release the 1.4.2 version and the long awaiting ngspice-rework-18 will be out on the 1st of december 2008.

Filed under: toped