New contributions ease adoption of Si2’s OpenAccess standard

AUSTIN, USA: Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) has announced new contributions which will provide additional tools to broaden adoption of the OpenAccess standard.

The first is from the OpenAccess Coalition Scripting Languages Working Group (WG), which has created interfaces between the OpenAccess API and popular open scripting languages. The second is a contribution from Voom, Inc., which allows designers to annotate designs in OpenAccess databases using any of the world’s languages using Unicode UTF-8 Encoding.

The OpenAccess Coalition also welcomes new members Invarian, Samsung, and Texas Instruments - bringing membership up to 47 companies, an increase of 40 percent in the last three years. Membership in the Coalition allows access to the latest Reference Implementation releases, as well as the opportunity to participate in the many working groups and governing bodies which guide the development of the standard and the Reference Implementation code.

The OpenAccess Coalition Scripting Languages Working Group has created new bindings for four popular programming languages: Perl, Python, Ruby and Tcl. Along with the existing C++ API, these new implementations of the OpenAccess API enable CAD developers and chip designers alike to easily extract and manipulate design data using their favorite scripting language.

The performance and usability of the new Scripting Languages Working Group bindings surpass previous open scripting language implementations. The Scripting Languages Working Group bindings are all based on the popular SWIG (swig.org) tool. This unified architecture eases maintenance and simplifies the addition of any of the many programming languages supported by SWIG.

"I used the OpenAccess Perl binding on multiple applications in a demanding production environment," commented independent consultant John McGehee. "It leverages the existing C++ API structure and OpenAccess documentation, and allows me to quickly develop applications in my clients’ choice of programming language."

The beta release is available now at si2.org for download by OpenAccess Coalition member companies. The working group is recruiting more interested companies to add new languages and exchange other information.