Allegro® PlatformSystem RequirementsSeries XL and GXL
Product Version 16.01December 2007
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Allegro Platform System Requirements
Contents
Allegro® Platform System Requirements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Microsoft Windows System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Using Spaces in File and Directory Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Sun Solaris System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Products Supported on Solx86 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Linux System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12IBM AIX System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13HP-UX System Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Improving Performance on UNIX Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Displaying UI Dialog Boxes Correctly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Graphics Requirements for Physical Design Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Planning Hardware Purchases for Physical Design Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17Additional Recommendations for Allegro Package Designer and SiP Products . . . . . . . 18Compiler Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Managing Licenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Non-Native X Emulators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
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Allegro Platform System Requirements
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Allegro® Platform System Requirements
This document contains the recommended system requirements for Cadence Silicon-Package-Board (SPB) tools, Release 16.01.
■ Microsoft Windows System Requirements on page 6
■ Sun Solaris System Requirements on page 8
■ Linux System Requirements on page 12
■ IBM AIX System Requirements on page 13
■ HP-UX System Requirements on page 14
■ Improving Performance on UNIX Systems on page 15
■ Displaying UI Dialog Boxes Correctly on page 15
■ Graphics Requirements for Physical Design Products on page 15
■ Planning Hardware Purchases for Physical Design Products on page 17
■ Additional Recommendations for Allegro Package Designer and SiP Products onpage 18
■ Compiler Requirements on page 19
Important
If you use a physical design product (Allegro PCB, APD, Allegro SI or Cadence SiP),be sure to read Graphics Requirements for Physical Design Products on page 15.
Note: All UNIX/Linux platforms: To ensure that your system is configured with the correctoperating system patches, run the checksysConf program. You can downloadchecksysConf from SourceLink.
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Microsoft Windows System Requirements
This section describes the system requirements for Windows.
Because Cadence Silicon-Package-Board (SPB) products are integrated directly withWindows, hardware and peripherals supported by Windows are also supported by theCadence SPB products. A list of hardware and peripherals officially supported by Windowscan be obtained from the Microsoft web page.
Note: Support for the Windows server does not include the Windows Remote Desktop(which is part of the terminal services package).
Platform ID wint
Operating System Windows 2003 Server, all Service Packs; Windows XPProfessional; Vista Enterprise and Ultimate (32 and 64 bit); VistaUltimate requires 64-bit dongle drivers for Flex software.
Hardware Intel IA-32 compatible (includes Intel P4 EMT and AMDOpteronTM); 1.2 GHz minimum; 2.4 GHz or more isrecommended.
Note: Cadence SPB products do not support the IPF chip.
CD-ROM driveEthernet card (for network communications and security hostID)Three-button Microsoft-compatible mouse
For information about graphics cards, see GraphicsRequirements for Physical Design Products on page 15.
Minimum Recommended
1 GB physical memory 2 GB physical memory
10 GB disk space 50 GB disk space
virtual memory should be atleast double the availablephysical memory
virtual memory should be atleast double the availablephysical memory
1024x768 resolution with64,000 colors
1280x1024 Color quality 32 bitgraphics
A dedicated graphics card isrecommended.
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Using Spaces in File and Directory Names
Support for spaces in file and directory names applies only to Windows. Spaces in file ordirectory names are not supported on UNIX platforms. Leading and trailing spaces indirectory components are not supported.
Spaces in directory names are supported in the following areas:
■ Program installation location (C:\Program Files)
■ Default user home directory (C:\Document and Settings\<user>). If you set theHOME environment variable, you override the default.
■ Default temporary directory (C:\Document and Settings\<user>). If you set theTEMP or TMP environment variable, you override the default.
■ Your desktop directory (C:\Document and Settings\<user>\Desktop)
■ Project location
■ Library locations
Spaces in filenames are not supported when a filename is stored in the design. For example,symbols and padstack names are stored in the Allegro database where a space is not legal.Ancillary space support is based upon each SPB application.
■ Allegro PCB Editor supports spaces in filenames for non-design files. Files that fall intothis category are reports and text files.
■ Optimal’s 3D field solver does not support spaces in path names, which means that itcannot be installed or run from directories that contain spaces in the name.
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Sun Solaris System Requirements
This section describes the system requirements for Solaris.
Platform ID sun4v
Operating System Solaris 8, 9, or 10
Hardware Sun UltraSparc or better.
1 GB (or greater) system memory
1 GB swap space
10 GB (or greater) available disk space
TrueColor required
For information about graphics cards, see Graphics Requirementsfor Physical Design Products on page 15.
Window Manager Common Desktop Environment (CDE) or Gnome
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This section describes the system requirements for Solaris 86, supported June 2008.
Products Supported on Solx86
These are the products we intend to support on Solx86:
Platform ID sol86
Operating System Solaris 10
Hardware Sun Ultra Class or better workstations
x86_64 (32 bit mode) CPU
(x86_64 denotes 64 bit processors whose instruction sets arecompatible with the X86 standard, such as Intel Xeon-EM64T,AMD Opteron, etc.)
1 GB (or greater) system memory
1 GB swap space
10 GB (or greater) available disk space
TrueColor required
For information about graphics cards, see Graphics Requirementsfor Physical Design Products on page 15.
Note: Allegro PCB Editor will not be able to open 14.x and olderdatabases. Use your original design platform to uprev older designs.
Valor does not support sol86.
PDF publisher is unavailable on this platform as Adobe does notprovide the programming libraries for sol86 platform.
Mentor translators are excluded as they require libraries fromMentor that are unavailable on sol86.
Design Workbench is not part of 16.01.
Window Manager Common Desktop Environment (CDE) or Gnome
Product Number Description
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PA1620 Allegro® System Architect - GXL
PA3410 Allegro® PCB Partitioning option
PA3420 Allegro® PCB RF option
PA3650 Allegro PCB Design HDL - GXL
PA3651 Allegro PCB Design CIS - GXL
PA5211 Allegro PCB SI Performance option
PA5216 Allegro PCB Design Planner option
PA5611 Allegro PCB SI S-Parameter option
PA5616 Allegro PCB SI Serial Link option
PA5630 Allegro® PCB SI - GXL
PA5631 Allegro PCB SI Analysis Backplane option
PS2000 Allegro® Design Entry HDL - L
PS2100 Allegro® Design Entry HDL Rules Checker option - L
PS3000 Allegro® PCB Design HDL - L
PS3100 Allegro® PCB Performance option - L
PS3200 PCB design studio variants option
PS3400 Allegro® PCB SI - L
PS3500 Allegro® Router Auto/Interactive option - L
PS3600 Allegro® Router Performance option - L
PX3000 Allegro® Design Entry HDL - XL
PX3100 Allegro® PCB SI - XL
PX3110 Allegro® PCB PI option - XL
PX3120 Allegro® PCB MI
PX3500 Allegro®PCB Librarian - XL
PX3600 Allegro® Physical Viewer
PX3700 Allegro® PCB Design HDL - XL
PX3800 Allegro® PCB Router - XL
PX4000 Allegro Package SI 610
PX4100 Allegro Package Designer L
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SPT256U Allegro® PCB Router 256U - L
SPT6U Allegro® PCB Router 6U - L
SPTADV Allegro® PCB Router ADV option - L
SPTDFM Allegro® PCB Router DFM option - L
SPTHP Allegro® PCB Router HP option - L
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Linux System Requirements
This section describes the system requirements for Linux.
SPB software does not support SLES 9 without SP1. Intel IA64 (Itanium) is not supported.
Note: If you are running SPB back-end tools, you must source
<cdsroot>/tools/pcb/bin/cshrc (tcsh/csh)
or
<cdsroot>/tools/pcb/bin/profile (sh/bash)
or intergrate the equivalent Linux settings into your own environment files. It is not sufficientjust to add SPB tools to the PATH variable.
Platform ID lnx86
Operating System RHEL 3.0 Update 5; RHEL 4.0 Update 1; SLES9 (SUSE) (SP1from Novell; kernel 2.6.5-7.139) or SLES10
Hardware IA32-compatible computers (includes Intel P4 compatibles,AMD OpteronTM, Intel P4 EMT, and AMD AthlonΤΜ)
1 GB (or greater) system memory
2 GB swap space
10 GB (or greater) available disk space
TrueColor required
For information about graphics cards, see Graphics Requirementsfor Physical Design Products on page 15.
Window Manager Gnome
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IBM AIX System Requirements
This section describes the system requirements for IBM AIX.
Platform ID ibmrs
Operating System AIX 5.3
Hardware POWER3 and PC_604
Note: Cadence SPB no longer supports Power2 and oldermachines. Run the lsattr -El proc0 command to check theCPU type; it should return a value containing the processor typeslisted above.
1 GB (or greater) system memory
2 GB swap space
10 GB (or greater) available disk space
TrueColor required
For information about graphics cards, see Graphics Requirementsfor Physical Design Products on page 15.
Window Manager Common Desktop Environment (CDE)
Backingstore needs to be enabled in the following manner:
1. Login as root.
2. Edit /usr/lpp/X11/defaults/xserverrc
3. Change the following line:
EXTENSIONS = “”
to read
EXTENSIONS = “-bs”
4. Reboot your machine.
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HP-UX System Requirements
SPB Release 16.0 does not operate on HP-UX platforms.
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Improving Performance on UNIX Systems
You may be able to greatly enhance your graphics performance on certain machines if yourun both X and Cadence SPB products on the same machine.
To run X and Cadence SPB products on the same machine, set the display variable to its localmode (type setenv DISPLAY :0 at the command prompt). This lets the X protocol useshared memory instead of expensive TCP/IP transport.
Displaying UI Dialog Boxes Correctly
If the secondary (child) dialog boxes disappear behind the main UI of Allegro PCB Editor, youneed to modify the window manager to keep child windows on top.
■ For Solaris
The typical window manager default configuration is
secondariesOnTop:False
❑ If you run CDE, add the following to your ~/.Xdefaults file
DTwm*secondariesOnTop:True
❑ If you want to restrict this behavior to certain programs, add the following to your~/.Xdefaults file
DTwm*<program>*secondariesOnTop:True
For example:
DTwm*Allegro*secondariesOnTop:True
Add an entry to the file for each program. When finished, restart the window manager.
Graphics Requirements for Physical Design Products
Most physical design products (such as Allegro PCB Editor, APD, SiP, and SI, but not AllegroPCB Router or SigXplorer) offer enhanced graphics via OpenGL. Front-end programs (suchas Allegro Design Entry and OrCAD Capture) do not offer OpenGL capability.
To use OpenGL as a graphics drawing option, your system must meet the followingrequirements:
■ A modern computer purchased within the last couple of years.
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■ A dedicated graphics card with hardware OpenGL support and a minimum of 128MBdedicated (not shared) video RAM and a 128-bit bus interface. (256MB or more isrecommended.) We also recommend that the card be workstation certified. (We do notrecommend motherboard-based graphics solutions.)
■ A minimum of 1 GB system memory.
■ Installation of the latest graphics patches from the graphics card vendor.
Important
As with most graphics support, you must ensure that the appropriate drivers areinstalled and properly configured on your system. If you use older versions, you maysee glitches with the display of objects, poor performance, and other problems. Inthe case of Windows Vista, only DirectX is available from the initial installation, soyou must obtain new drivers before you attempt to run SPB tools. Make sure thatvideo cards for Linux have Linux drivers available.
Remote graphics are not supported. Examples include:
■ Windows terminal services such as Citrix
■ VPN based programs
■ Remote X programs (for example: Hummingbird)
■ Thin client solutions (for example: SunRays)
■ Remote X clients (for example: Sun to Sun)
For Release 16.0, all SPB tools require at least 65000 colors. They no longer support 256color mode (also known as 8 plane mode in the X window world). Unix/Linux Xservers mustbe configured to use the TrueColor model.
Only the 2D mode is supported. OpenGL requires higher level graphics cards for bestperformance. On Solaris and AIX platforms, OpenGL requires TrueColor 24 bit graphicsettings, and will not display all colors if the system defaults are 8 bit color.
OpenGL is enabled by default. You can disable it using the environment variabledisable_opengl in the OpenGL category of the User Preferences Editor dialog box.
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Planning Hardware Purchases for Physical DesignProducts
The SPB product family includes products like Schematic Capture and Library Design. Theseplace higher demands on disk access and do not tend to need the fastest CPU available.However, most Allegro back-end products are CPU and memory-bound. This is especiallytrue of the back-end products: Allegro PCB Editor, PCB Router, APD, and PCB SI. Therefore,Cadence recommends a faster CPU for these products.
Allegro products use both integer and floating point, so you should select a configuration thatprovides ample processing power in both areas. When choosing a machine, purchase onewith the highest CPU rating. Because vendors are de-emphasizing their CPU clocking, usethe vendors’ chip naming convention. Alternatively, use a performance benchmarkmeasurement. For example, the SPEC site (http://www.spec.org) lists the hardwareresults from multiple vendors.
If two systems have comparable ratings, purchase the system with the larger Level 2 cache,even if its ratings are slightly slower. Buying a top-end CPU usually also brings a system withthe latest motherboard, bus architecture, and RAM hardware.
In the Windows environment, if the machine is recommended for gamers, it will meet theneeds of high-end Physical Implementation design. The exception to this rule is that forAllegro products, you do not need dedicated sound cards. A dedicated graphics card isrecommended to a motherboard-based graphics card because motherboard cards sharememory and bus access with the CPU.
Buy enough memory so you are not paging during your work. One gigabyte is a good startingpoint for average PCB designs but you may need to raise the total if you plan on auto-routing,signal integrity work, or multi-board simulation. A rule of thumb is to take a recently completedboard and your memory requirement would be:
Memory requirements = 512 Megs + (Design_Size_on_disk * 10)
then round up to the next half gigabyte.
Example: If you have a 50 MB board then you would need 1.5 GB of memory.
If you plan on using centralized Cadence software, design, or library storage, a 100 Mbsnetwork connection is recommended.
While SPB products do not require 64-bit CPUs, our tools will perform better on the 64-bitarchitectures. The exception is that we do not support the Intel Itanium chip.
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While SPB products do not take advantage of multi-processors, having a second processorcan be advantageous in both the Windows and UNIX (Linux) environments.
■ On Windows, the second chip can remove the performance penalty that is imposed byVirus checkers, inventory management, and other overhead software that can be foundinstalled on modern Windows systems. In this area, the Intel HT technology can help withWindows “overhead” processing.
■ On UNIX systems, graphics programs will achieve better performance due to the natureof the X-windows architecture. The additional CPUs also will allow you to run backgroundprocesses, such as auto-routers and simulators.
In the Intel CPU world, P4, Xeons and AMD chips typically leapfrog each other on which isthe top performer. You will have better performance using a 64-bit-capable chip over a 32-bit-only CPU (excluding the Intel IPF chip).
If you are considering a laptop computer, look at the “workstation replacement” laptops eventhough they are heavier and have less battery life than more conventional laptops.
Finally, when purchasing a new system, look at your future needs and not your currentrequirements.
Additional Recommendations for Allegro PackageDesigner and SiP Products
The Cadence 3D Design Viewer (standard in SiP, optional add-on for APD) requires anOpenGL-compliant video card (128 MB recommended minimum video memory).
In Release 16.0, IC-Package co-design capability (available in Package Designer XL and SiP)is available only on the Solaris and Linux platforms. Likewise, since this capability works withthe Encounter-based IC floor-planning technology, you should plan that systems running thiscapability have sufficient disk and memory space for the Encounter-based and Allegroportions of the applications, as well as sufficient disk space for the IC portions of your systemdesigns.
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Compiler Requirements
Microsoft Windows
Sun Solaris
Sun Sol86
Linux
Compiler: Visual Studio.Net 2003
Required CompilerOptions:
32 bit compiler
8 byte structure alignment (-Zp8)
multi-thread dll (-MD)
cdecl calling convention (-Gd)
Compiler: Studio 10
Required CompilerOptions:
32 bit compiler
8 byte structure alignment (-dalign)
multi-threaded (-D_REENTRANT)
Position independent code (-KPIC)
Required DLL LinkerOptions:
multi-threaded (-mt)
Compiler: Sun Studio 11P2
Required CompilerOptions:
32 bit compiler
8 byte structure alignment (-dalign)
multi-threaded (-D_REENTRANT)
Position independent code (-KPIC)
Required DLL LinkerOptions:
multi-threaded (-mt)
Compiler: Mainsoft provided (version 3.4.3)
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IBM AIX
Managing Licenses
All SPB tools support the use of an options file, which you can use to restrict user accessand manage licensing beyond the limits of the license file. To have products return theirlicenses to the license pool when they are idle, SPB tools let you add a TIMEOUT line, whichsets a maximum amount of time (in seconds) that a license can remain inactive, to theoptions file. The queing argument of the NOLOG line in the options file, however, is notsupported.
For more information about licensing and the options file, refer to the Cadence LicenseManager document.
Non-Native X Emulators
Cadence tools only support the XServer provided by the OS platform vendors (Sun, Linux,AIX, and HPUX). Non-native X solutions such as Hummingbird, Exceed, etc., are notsupported.
Required CompilerOptions:
32 bit compiler
position independent code (-fPIC)
Required DLL LinkerOptions:
-fPIC -shared
Compiler: VA 7.0
Required CompilerOptions:
32 bit compiler
language level support (-qlanglvl=extended:redefmac)
C++ name mangling (-qnamemangling=v5)
Required DLL LinkerOptions:
-brtl -G
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