Magic tooltool interface

Abstract

The Air Force Institute of Technology, like many other schools, uses the Berkeley Tool Set for chip layout in VLSI design courses. One of the important tools of this set is the layout editor, MAGIC. Designing at the mask level is one of the important aspects of a VLSI design course, as it allows students to get a feel for what kinds of decisions and design trade-offs must be made in creating a circuit. One of the drawbacks of using a layout editor, such as MAGIC, is the amount of time it takes students to learn the interface to the tool, and the resistance to having to memorize a long list of commands or macros. To overcome this drawback, we have created a graphical user interface using Tooltool.