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EDA: Unix vs. NT
Geoff Parker wrote in with a
story about competition between
Unix and Linux vs. NT in the EDA market. An interesting read that puts Linux in good light and
says that expctations for the EDA on NT market are falling short . It
also seems Intel has a 1000-member LUG.
Please report to your regeneration creche for your humor upgrade.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
1) This was a DAC for the aerobic. The fool hall was all in line. A truly linear DAC.
2) Penguins *everywhere* -- even among the companies that didn't know that it would draw attention from Linux lovers.
3) In conversations with some of the companies that _don't_ have announced Linux products, it turns out that all it'll take is someone ready to write a purchase order. Typical conversation:
"Do you have a Linux version?"
"No, but it wouldn't be difficult."
"I know that it's not a big deal to port between Unix versions."
"No, you don't understand. Our programmers insist on developing under Linux -- the commercial versions are the ports. All we need is an order."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I remember a big thing in Integrated System Design last year about how many companies were porting their UNIX-based EDA tools to NT. There was a sampler CD (I still haven't microwaved that one yet) with useless demos on it.
:-)* ).
The readers, the people who have to use the damn software, went on a rampage. Letters poured into the journal, and contained things like, "If my dept. goes NT, I quit." Some people knew their managers would jump on it and were scared of that. Some felt comfortable because their management wasn't that dumb.
Many suggested writing to the EDA companies and urging, "If you're gonna port it, port it to Linux."
It's good, this is a user base, that could care less about MSOffice, et al. and just want to use what they know works.
Of course we all kind of find out what it's like to be a win user with that Linux guy shoving Linux-this, Linux-that down everybody's throats (I admittedly get like that, I laugh at other people's BSODs
Oh well, I'm glad the EDA companies are getting the point.
Your first mistake is taking "benchmarks"
at face value. Your second mistake is
believing that this benchmark applies to
the box running NT at your office cause
I'll wager yours isn't a Quad-Xeon with
4 Enet controllers.
Go look at the c't magaizine review to get
a clearer picture! Turns out there is a
corner case with 4 Enet controllers that
Linux has to improve on. This is a fairly
rare setup, most machines are going to have
1 NIC - maybe 2....where there is a different
result to the benchmark!
Next - in the EDA market that this article
is talking about (which is where I live all
day as a user) NT leaves alot to be desired
as a platform. Some of this is just "it isn't
what I'm used too" while other parts have to
do with a lack of a good scripting environment.
Oddly - the scripting can be corrected by putting
the MKS tool kit and perl on your machine...still
EDA users are usually unix jocks - and we like
having all the unix tools like awk and sed to
deal with the differences between EDA tools.
There are some EDA related benchmarks
published by ISD magazine (www.isd.com) that
might be of interest to folks if you want
to see how NT really faired!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
What we can tell is that those numbers are unlikely to reflect a representative sample of real NT sites, since most users would have experienced downtime at intervals of less than six months due to the service packs and security holes on NT that require attention with clockwork regularity.
I wouldn't take anything that those consulting firms publish very seriously, unless it comes with a lot of detail about how the experiment/survey was designed and unless that design actually survives scrutiny.
I think there's just going to be as much place for NT as there is for Unix and Linux, and all other varients. These 'holy wars' between the two really don't have much effect on the people who already been using Unix/Linux/NT for an amount of time (Or so I observe). It's a waste of bandwidth almost. Clearly, I won't complain all that much, considering the way the Linux developers have responded to the benchmarks. But when people realize some will always like a point-and-click, and others will always like command line, then the world will be a happier place.. =] I suppost MS as much as I dispise them. Most of us techies and whatnot have our jobs because of MS (Entry level type techs in ISPs and whatnot, not you 75k a year techs =]). But still, the world is always going to need and want choice.
NT ? Despite all the talk about how NT is better then Unix/Linux/BSD Etc.. I _still_ fail to see why.
.. we _do_ have VisualBasic/Java scripts bloating the server, and taking a week to load up.
As a file server NT severly struggles, at work we (unfortuently) run a 100 person NT network.. and the fileserver would crumble under any sort of network trafic. Crashing 5 times a day, walking intot he server room like a zombie to hit the infamous 'reset' button isnt suitable alternative.
Solution: Samba.
Samba has reached a point where it can almost totally replace NT, Our NT servers, now only act as one thing.. Print Server. All file server functions are handled under Samba, Running Debian(potato). Even more so. the move over from NT to Linux/Samba was almost flawless. All file server accesses are Authenticated with the NT server.
Result. Currently our file server running Linux/Samba doesnt crash. NT Still crashes at least once or twice a day.
Now if i wanted to actually spend a tad of effort, lets see.. i'll move DNS/DHCP over to the Linux Machine, Set up Masquarading, Setup Samba to ack as a PDC, Then finally Do lpr/printer stuff. And finally i will try to figure out why we have a P2-400 PDC, and and Dual p2-300's BDC sitting there collecting dust, as a p100 takes over the job.
But sure.. lets see what else nt tries to do which my Linux machine does better
a) IIS, sure its faster then Apache. no-one is arguing that, at least they shouldnt be. but Who doesnt have a web page without cgi/perl/postgres/php3/python... WAIT
b) Mirroring works under Linux and NT. It was the main issue when moving the file server over.
c) graphical clicky thingies for the typing impaired: For you folk yes you still can use M$ programs to modify the settings on Samba shared files.
Any M$ Fan here want to let me know how/why Linux with Samba + 10 hours of work, could totally Replace NT ?
-- Chris Andrews
One of the leading German EDA companies, CadSoft has already released a Linux version of their PCB CAD package which is actively marketed the same way as the DOS and Windows 95/NT versions. So, apparently, there is a market.
-- Jochen