A framework for distributed Web-based microsystem design

Abstract

The increasing complexity of microsystem design mandates a distributed and collaborative design environment. The high integration levels call for tools and generators that allow exploration of the design space irrespective of the geographical or physical availability of the design tools. The World Wide Web serves as a desirable platform for distributed access to libraries, models and design tools. The rapid growth and acceptance of the World Wide Web has happened over the same time period in which distributed object systems have stabilized and matured. The Web can become an important platform for VLSI CAD, when the distributed object technologies (e.g, CORBA) are combined with the Web technologies (e.g., HTTP, CGI) and Web-aware object oriented languages (e.g., Java). In this thesis, a framework using the Object-Web technologies is presented, which enables distributed Web based CAD. The Object-Web architecture provides an open, interoperable and scalable distributed computing environment for microsystem design, in which Web based design tools can efficiently utilize the capabilities of existing design tools on the Web to build hierarchical Web tools. The framework includes the infrastructure to store and manipulate design objects, protocols for tool communication and WebTop, a Java hierarchical schematic/block editor with interfaces to distributed Web tools and cell libraries.