Doing more with less: Magic on Windows 95/NT

Abstract

Since its creation in the mid 1980's, Magic has been one of the most widely used layout tools for Manhattan (Mead and Conway) style IC layout. This is due to its flexibility, ease of use, and cost (free via ftp). Magic has been ported to many platforms, including the MAC-II and DOS, but mainly Unix-based platforms. The DOS version was limited and not widely used. With the proliferation of Windows 95/NT platforms, it seems only natural that Magic be ported to Windows 95/NT. Yet, there does not appear to be a port to Windows 95/NT available. The reason for this appears to be the difficulty of programming "windows" in this environment. We believe that we have a way around this difficulty. Development is currently underway to port Magic to Windows 95/NT using Tcl and the Tk Toolkit. This should ease the interface to the window system through "generic" routines. As a matter of fact, the same Tcl/Tk display driver should function under X11 Unix-based platforms us well as Windows 95/NT and other platforms with Tcl and Tk Toolkits.