2 Concept ( Tools - Specification ( Tools + Design Stages ( Tools - Implementation ( Tools Figure 1-1. A nominal, multi-stage development process From that beginning, we have progressed to the point where the EDA community at large, including both users and developers of the tools, are interested in more unified environments. Here, the notion is that the tools used at the various stages in the development process need to be able to complement each other, and to communicate with one another efficiently using effective file exchange capabilities. Furthermore, the idea of capturing all the tool...