MTEX - A Bridge for Migrating CAD Design Environment from UNIX to NT

This paper shares an innovative technology that we developed while migrating Intel CAD design environment from UNIX to Microsoft Windows NT operating system. The UNIX to Windows NT migration is a complex and challenging task because the chip design environment involves CAD applications, CAD infrastructure scripts, design flows made up of UNIX-centric scripts and design data.

Due to the wide differences between UNIX and NT scripting architectures, straight porting to native NT scripting environment is not feasible without a complete redesign and redevelopment of the CAD infrastructure and design flow scripts. Our approach to this problem was to develop a transition production-capable mixed NT-UNIX CAD environment technology, MTEX, with the eventual goal of complete migration to a Windows NT CAD environment. This technology solves the script migration problem and supports a seamless mix of UNIX and NT centric CAD tools.

In this paper we will present MTEX functionality, its internal design and architecture.