Effective Data Management for VLSI Design

The need for good data management in a VLSI design system is becoming increasingly important as designs become more complex and as the number of different aspects of a cell which the design system handles increases. Neither standard tree-structured file-systems nor commercially available database management systems are adequate. The VTI chip manager uses a different data model more appropriate for CAD, allowing both easy sharing of parts of a design whilst insulating users from tentative changes being made by others. It is designed to be implementable on a wide range of real-world file-systems.