
                          Linux Port #3 of Magic 6.3 
                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Magic is a graphical CAD tool for generating physical layout descriptions of
VLSI circuits.  The Magic system includes the Magic layout editor, the switch-
level circuit simulator IRSIM, and utilities for converting extracted netlists
to various simulation-compatible formats (e.g. ext2spice, ext2sim, etc.).  This
is a port of the 1990 DECWRL/Livermore Magic release (a.k.a. Magic 6.3) to the
Linux operating system.  See the comp.lsi.cad newsgroup for more information on
other freely-available VLSI CAD tools that work under Linux (e.g. the Chipmunk
CAD suite from Caltech).

Now that the Linux-Magic user base has grown to a substantial size, the feed-
back has allowed the port to rapidly converge to something finally useful for
serious work.  While the first two port releases concentrated only on getting
the layout editor and netlist extractor to work, the help of other users has
brought the entire system up to snuff:

Disclaimer:  Use these programs at your own risk!  Magic is famous for having
             bugs and eccentricities, and myself and the other co-porters are
	     not responsible for them or your chips in any way.

Port Release #3:

	* irsim now works properly (thanks to Dmitry Teytelman of Stanford)

	* memory management now works properly (thanks to ChihKuang Ou of USC)

	* All patches from Bob Mayo's DECWRL notes have been applied (e.g.
	  reduced memory usage in design-rule checking, improved resistor
	  and transistor extraction, improved calma support, etc.)

	* miscellaneous porting-fixes for Magic (e.g. :zoom, :rsim, :help) and
	  ext2spice+ (the hierarchical version from ic.berkeley.edu)

	* configuration support (:config & makfiles) for Linux

	* sed script for using the gcc pre-processor with technology files

In order to run Magic, set the following environment variables (use the name
of this directory on *your* system instead of "/usr/cad/magic-6.3"):

	CAD_HOME=/usr/cad/magic-6.3
	export CAD_HOME
	PATH=$PATH:$CAD_HOME/bin
	MANPATH=$MANPATH:$CAD_HOME/man

To recompile the Magic programs, irsim, or ext2spice+ see the Readme file in
the $CAD_HOME/src directory.

Of particular importance will be the step for rebuilding the technology files,
as you will most certainly be tinkering with these even if you don't recompile
the executables.  A snapshot of the current MOSIS scmos technology files has
been included ($CAD_HOME/src/magic/tech/scmos_mosis).

Feel free to send e-mail to har@caltech.edu regarding problems you think are
due to porting.

-Harold Levy

