GARDEN—An integrated and evolving environment for ULSI/VLSI CAD applications

The design and specification of efficient and powerful Ultra Large Scale Integration/ Very Large Scale Integration (ULSI/VLSI) computer-aided design (CAD) systems to deal with the current integrated circuit manufacturing technology is beyond the capabilities of the usual software development methodologies. This paper presents GARDEN, an integrated ULSI/VLSI design environment conceived to cope with problems in the evolution of the computing environment. It also highlights the utilization of the Vienna Development Methodology (VDM) for the specification, design, implementation, and maintenance—in short, all of the software life cycle—of this CAD system, under development at the IBM Brazil Rio Scientific Center.