SPI: an open interface integrating highly interactive electronic CAD tools

This paper describes the SPI interface as an interface unifying the integration of electronic CAD tools. The goal of the interface is to provide a direct communication and interactive feedback between the primary design tools (schematics editors, symbolic layout editors, module generators etc.) and intelligent verification tools (electrical debugging, timing verification, simulation etc). The SPI interface is not a framework but complementary to existing frameworks. It is the specification of a structure procedural interface together with some utilities to standardise the communication among CAD tools and to support their integration. SPI offers a novel interface that supports, in an easy and efficient way, the integration of in-house as well as foreign CAD tools. SPI will be made available and promoted in the European Electronic CAD Community