Hello, all,
I'm hereby announcing Data.GDS, a small module to write and
(eventually -- that's part of the "pre") read GDS files. For those of
you not in the semiconductor biz, GDS-II is one of the classic formats
of the industry. It's perhaps ever so slightly obsolete at this point,
as the OASIS format is in the process of displacing it, but there are
still huge numbers of designs in GDS format, and lots and lots of
tools deal with it.
Since I'm a sad sick weirdo(*), I spent a perfectly nice & sunny
NorCal day hacking up this initial version of this module. It is to
the point where it can generate a GDS file of your devising, although
your specification of it still has to be at a very low level. It would
be, and eventually will be, nicer to specify things at a higher level
of abstraction. Also, it will eventually be nice to be able to read
GDS files, returning an array of GDSRecord. I know how to do that, and
I plan to, but I haven't got there yet.
This ought to already be properly cabalized, and there's a small test
program included; run it, save the output somewhere, and compare that
with the sample GDS file which I also included in the tarball. If you
examine the GDS file itself, you will see that, although it is small,
it does in fact contain vital bits of design which will no doubt
enable the biz to continue Moore's law for at least another century or
so.
Once I've implemented the reader, I'll upload this to hackage; in the
meantime, if any of you are especially interested in what the rest of
the interface to this should look like, I'm happy to hear your
suggestions!
Uwe
(*) In point of fact, I am neither sad nor sick; I am in fact mostly
happy & healthy. The reason I wasn't out taking a long walk today was
because, alas, I dinged one achilles tendon a few days ago, and wanted
to let it heal a bit... as to the "weirdo" charge, I beg you, gentle
readers, avert your eyes while I plead no contest! :-)
