UNIX Workstations for EDA Applications

Electronic designers are fortunate to have workstation and server suppliers such as Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard. These two respected companies deliver high-quality products. IBM and Compaq also sell into this market, but with just a fraction of the entire UNIX EDA application market. They, too, are great companies. This review looks at the choices in UNIX workstations available from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems as we leave 1999 and begin the year 2000.

In May of 1999 Hewlett-Packard began to release new classes of workstations for EDA applications. These were the B1000, the C3000, and the dual-processor J5000 systems, all based on the PA 8500 RISC processor. In 1999, the HP 8500 RISC processor received the Microprocessor Report Editor's Choice award: Best RISC processor. In September, HP released the J7000 4-way multiprocessing workstation, which also uses the PA 8500.

In November, Sun Microsystems released the new Ultra 80 workstation in single, dual and 4-way UltraSPARC-II processor models. While encompassing products scaled for performance, the systems were also fitted with larger memory and storage options compared to their predecessors. Sun continues to offer the popular UltraSPARC-II based Ultra 60 at a reduced price. Both Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems now offer 64 bit processing with their latest microprocessors and operating systems. This alleviates the 4GB memory-address limit of 32-bit processing.

As we expect from new computing products in the market, the value/price and price/performance ratios were improved in 1999. The systems were intended to improve the productivity of the chip designer, and in some cases may be the only solution for the chip designer to complete the most complex chip design in time for unforgiving fast-moving markets.

Highly visible in the rear-view mirrors of these suppliers are the mass-market Intel microprocessor workstation products moving up the performance track. Competition comes from many directions -- personal computer suppliers and other UNIX workstation suppliers. However, support of the operating systems -- Windows/NT, UNIX, and Linux, and optimum system performance still provide a means to differentiate among the many workstations. Examples of addressing the operating system quandary are that Sun Microsystems has chosen to offer the SunPCi card for running Windows/NT applications on a UNIX workstation, and Hewlett-Packard has chosen to support Linux on Intel and Intel-compatible microprocessor-based HP workstations. Both of these strategies originate from countering some of the benefits that the mass-market personal computer and server suppliers offer.

Table 1 shows that design engineers may choose from an array of products from just these two suppliers. To choose a workstation, the design engineer will likely weigh the best fit for the applications being used as well as the overall computer resources available or planned for at the local site. Most design sites now have servers as well as workstations. The data in the table below is just an indicator of what may be expected in performance levels from individual applications. If you know from your applications what they most demand--for example, CPU cycles, floating point calculation, memory access speed, or disk I/O--the data can be a meaningful indicator. The workstation purchase process should also include a review of application benchmarks most likely available from your workstation supplier. The application benchmarks are one more indicator of how well the basic system specifications contribute to your expectations, and they are a reflection of the code and system optimization that the EDA and workstation suppliers have achieved for the application. If your UNIX applications do not demand high performance, a lower priced low-end workstation may be the best value. Table 1 lists the basic system specifications.

	Sun Ultra 60/360 1-way and 2-way	Sun Ultra 60/450 1-way and 2-way	Sun Ultra 80/450 1, 2, and 4-way	HP B3000 1-way	HP J5000 2-way	HP J7000 4-way
Processor	Ultra SPARC-II	Ultra SPARC-II	Ultra SPARC-II	PA 8500 RISC	PA 8500 RISC	PA 8500 RISC
Clock	360 MHz	450 MHz	450 MHz	400 MHz	440 MHz	440 MHz
Max. RAM	2GB	2GB	4GB	4GB	4GB	8GB
Memory Speed/Bus Throughput	60 ns	60 ns	60 ns	2GB/s	2GB/s	1.3GB/s
Max. Internal Disk Storage	36.4GB	36.4GB	36GB	36GB	72GB	72GB
Disk IO/Drive Speed	40MB/s	40MB/s	40MB/s	10K rpm	10K rpm	10K rpm
SPECint95	16.1	19.7	19.7	30.3	32.6	32.4
SPECfp95	Single CPU- 23.5 Dual CPU- 29.5	Single CPU- 27.0 Dual CPU- 32.7	Single CPU-27.9 Dual CPU- 36.1 Quad CPU- 44.6	48.6	Dual CPU- 52.3	Quad CPU- 45.8

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