Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

[email protected] · Fri, 08 Apr 94 20:52:10 -0400

Here's a few thoughts from a CAPFAST user:

My gut feeling is that using EDIF as the sole db format may be more 
work than it is worth.  If the EDIF file contained all the graphical
info, it would be bigger and therefore load slower than the current
gdct ascii files.  

We currently do several filter steps on the EDIF file generated by
CAPFAST, including name mangling, and doing that at dbLoadXxx time
would also slow rebooting.  As previously noted, flat files are much easier
to apply filters to, especially awk and sed type filters (which we use).
With an ASCII load, we could eliminate the last atdb step.

For these reasons, I'm in favour of supporting (yuck) more than
a single ascii format.  (I'd still wish for some way to move designs between
gdct and CAPFAST, but currently don't have the resources to solve that
problem here at CEBAF.)

I'm satisfied with the benchmarks already run, and am willing to have
the binary format dropped and support only the gdct ASCII format (with
dbLoad remaining for another release or two for backward compatibility).

Chip

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System