Talk:Stanford University Design System

SUDS at DEC?

Was SUDS of any influence at DEC, on their CAD tools? There is a report that it was "licensed to DEC for the SuperFoonly => KL10 project, which was how Dick Helliwell ended up at DEC", but I'd be hesitant to rely on that, as Rich Alderson (generally knowledgeable, but I'm not sure he was ever at DEC) might be confusing it with the SuperFoonly itself, which definitely did wind up at DEC (to be toned down into the KL10). Jnc (talk) 17:15, 6 January 2024 (CET)

Urr, I'm a moron! The Stanford University Design System Overview sez "SUDS is configured to run on either DECsystem 10 or 20 operating systems with graphics terminals"; "communicate with other CAD processes used at DEC"; and "SUDS is actually only the starting point in a whole array of computer-aided (CAD) tools under development at DEC".

The fact that that document came out of DEC Engineering should have clued me in! I didn't notice that at first; I assumed it was written at SAIL.

Now that my brain has turned on, I started to wonder about other influence paths; something rang a bell about a path through the S-1 supercomputer, and sure enough, S-1 Supercomputer (1975-1988) reveals "McWilliams and Widdoes [designers of the S-1] are even better known for the major advances in CAD tools for logic design that they developed as part of the early days of the project and for the startup company they founded, Valid Logic Systems". That also reveals that SUDS was integrated in SCALD I by McWilliams and Widdoes.

So it was a very consequential system indeed! Jnc (talk) 17:48, 6 January 2024 (CET)

As far as I understand, SUDS was used with GT40 or similar displays at DEC. I believe Helliwell was hired by DEC to maintain SUDS there. I vaguely recall XKL using SUDS with output converted to X11. I found someone on LinkedIn writing about his XKL experience, "Recruited to maintain Stanford University Design System (SUDS), the company’s in-house CAD software used for designing circuit boards." Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 09:26, 7 January 2024 (CET)

From https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt367nf2qj/entire_text/ "Dick Helliwell subsequently took over further development and maintenance of SUDS and went with it to the Digital Equipment Corporation, where it was used as their primary design tool for at least a decade. It was also used by Information International Incorporated (III), Foonly Inc., Valid Logic, and Cisco Systems." Larsbrinkhoff (talk) 09:36, 7 January 2024 (CET)

Yeah, that DEC manual says (pp. 11-13) that it can use a "GT40 or GT60"; I've never seen mention of a GT60 before, but there were various GT40 brethren built around different PDP-11's - the GT44 used an -11/40 - and an entry on pg.12 makee think a GT60 might be one built around a PDP-11/60.

That Stanford page is interesting; it shows that SUDS was apparently originally written by Phil Petit - not Dick Helliwell, as previously thought. (Well, to be technical, it only says Petit "initiat[ed] the first interactive electronic design system", so that doesn't say he wrote it - but "Dick Helliwell subsequently took over further development and maintenance of SUDS" does sort of say he didn't write it to start with. Petit's award talk (on that page) doesn't say exactly what his role was, either. Still, a useful correction; he apparently was the original spark for it. Jnc (talk) 16:53, 7 January 2024 (CET)