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Technology Stocks : 3DFX

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To: Joe C. who wrote (5345)7/14/1998 10:25:00 PM
From: Frank Sheridan  Read Replies (1) of 16960
 
A short explanation of what a Quickturn emulator is and why it benefits TDFX.

A Quickturn emulator is (to put it simply) a programmable sea of gates realized in hardware. In the real world it looks like a glorified "tower" style P.C. It makes it possible for I.C. designers to create a "virtual machine" in hardware. In other words, once the engineers have finished designing the timing diagrams and electrical schematics (or their Verilog models or whatever..) for their next generation chip they can create an exact model of what they plan to build using the Quickturn machine.

The reason that this is good news for TDFX is because it will allow them to diagnose many potential problems in new products before they pay for tooling and fabrication. Also, it will allow them to try some different ideas and simulate them to see if they are worth pursuing.

IMHO Quickturn machines are regarded as the kind of tools the "big boys" use. As I understand it Intel used a few of them linked together to simulate the Pentium(s). They had their new architecture booting windows before a single wafer was baked. Pretty cool, huh?

Regards.
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