An important goal of this class is to make students aware and to some extent skilled in using various CAD tools available in the market today. We already have a decent setup of a variety of CAD tools in place which are used industry wide for all commercial designs. This page contains relevant info for all you need to do to get started with these tools. We will keep things posted as we progress.

Read the following :

• 1. You will use the workstations at EE Design Labs located at 1212-1218 Mudd.(also called VLSI lab)
• 2. You need
  • Swipe/badge access to the lab
  • An active login ID
• 3. You should be able to access the lab by swiping your CU ID by WEdnesday(09/19)
• 4. Your login ID's have already been created.
  • Your login ID is your CUNIX ID for all on-campus students.
    For example : if your cunix email is ab123@columbia.edu, your login ID is ab123.
  • You will receive an email with your login ID if you are a CVN student.
  • You have to physically go to the lab atleast once to choose your passwords.
  • You can try loging on to any of the computers in the 1212/1218 EE design labs. It will ask you for your new password.
  • Please do NOT share your accounts with peers.
  • You can always logon to these computers remotely after you have chosen your password once.
• 5. Once you have succesfully logged in, there will be tutorials available later to guide you further through the CAD tools.

Of course if you are unable to log-on, you have to send me an email at sumit@cisl.columbia.edu.

Guidelines for working in VLSI Lab : The Lab is managed by EE Department and they have some general guidelines which are to be followed strictly. Failure to comply by these rules generally results in permanent deletion of the account without much discussion. In all cases, it will be extremely difficult for the instructor or TA to restore the account.

• Do NOT bring any friends/visitors in the lab and let them use the machines on your account.
• The quota for each student is 80 MB. Therefore, it is important that you keep only relevant files in your home. In case, you genuinely need more space, consult the TA.
• Do NOT, under any circumstances, log on to the machine "casdserv2.cisl.columbia.edu". Its for use of system Administration purposes only.
• Do NOT fire huge printing jobs at the lab printer. Printers are for your convinience and printing anything other than HW or project files is NOT permitted. We have limited quota on the paper and we have to work within those limits. Also DO NOT try to print tool documentation. Such files are hundreds of pages.
• Do NOT reboot the machines. Several other people might have important jobs running on the same machine. Contact system adminitrators in case it hangs or freezes.
• System Adminitrators :
  • David Sussillo [sussillo@ee.columbia.edu]
  • Yi-Shin Li [ysli@ee.columbia.edu]

Some Facts You need to know....

• The printer name is "vlsip". In order to print a file, type : lpr -Pvlsip file_name
• To log on remotely, use following machine names.
  • aegina.cisl.columbia.edu
  • syracuse.cisl.columbia.edu
  • nemea.cisl.columbia.edu
  • delphi.cisl.columbia..edu
  • marathon.cisl.columbia.edu
  • corinth.cisl.columbia.edu
  • thebes.cisl.columbia.edu
  • rhodes.cisl.columbia.edu
  • byzantium.cisl.columbia.edu
  • olympus.cisl.columbia.edu
• Your default shell is "ksh". If you "really" hate this shell and want to use some different shell, send me an email.
• When working remotely, you need to set the display first. To do this , follow the following session on the computer you are sitting on :
  
  $ xhost +
  $ ssh -l user_name remote_machine_name
  prompted for password....type in
  $ export DISPLAY=mymachine:0.0
  
  Where "$" represents the command prompt and "mymachine" is the full name of the computer you are sitting on and "remote_machine_name" is any name from the list of names given above.
• All paths for CAD tools should be automatically set. Wait for the tutorials on these.
• More to come ....

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