The Linux port resulted from a strong user demand, said John Lenyo, director of marketing at Model Technology. "To gauge general demand, we mentioned it casually in our quarterly newsletter," he said. "You would have thought we were giving away free money. About two days after that newsletter went out we were bombarded with requests from customers."

The demand for Linux, said Lenyo, is coming from customers who want to add low-cost workstations to "simulation farms" that can considerably boost simulation speed and capacity. Lenyo said that some installations have as many as 10 simulation seats per designer.

Red Hat Linux

Model Technology is focusing on Red Hat Software's Linux version 6.0, Lenyo said. The Linux support is slated for December delivery. ModelSim pricing, which starts at $15,000, is platform-independent.

Meanwhile, Model Technology is expanding its platform support in another direction with 64-bit Unix. Thus far, EDA vendors have primarily rolled out 64-bit support for IC physical-design tools rather than HDL simulators.

But simulation is going to need 64-bit support too, Lenyo said, because some simulations are getting too large for 32-bit address spaces. Using a rule of thumb of around 750 bytes per gate, he noted, a 6 million-gate simulation would take 4.5 Gbytes — well beyond what a 32-bit workstation can handle.

There aren't a lot of users seeking 64-bit support at present, but Model Technology is "trying to get out ahead of the curve," Lenyo said. ModelSim EE and SE support for 64-bit HP-UX and Solaris will be available in the first quarter of 2000.