Product Datasheet - Shearwater Group - HyperPlot
HyperPlot®
World standard for plotting & printing solutions in the IC industry
Few software applications in EDA have achieved the acceptance of the worldwide I.C. Design community to such a great degree as has HyperPlot. With its tens of thousands of users, HyperPlot is truly a standard in all areas of the world for the plotting of I.C. design data. Through very high quality standards and rigorous stress testing, HyperPlot is a product that enables the user to rest assured that this small but difficult task in I.C. design will not take resources away from other critical parts of the design process.
The current HyperPlot v5.1 supports Cadence Design System's 5.0 and includes significant new speed increases. These speed improvements primarily target those I.C. structures with heavily arrayed data structures. Customers with a great deal of memory on their chips could see up to a 10x improvement in throughput. All chips will see a portion of that increase.
HyperPlot Rasterisers to Fit Your Need
The HyperPlot rasteriser is the core product of the HyperPlot product family and is provided in two versions to fit your plotting needs. Each version includes one input format and one output driver of choice so the HyperPlot rasteriser is a standalone fully functional printing tool requiring no additional modules or product options. All HyperPlot versions differ only in speed, each containing the same feature set for I.C. plotting, including unlimited file size and plot size.
HyperPlot (i): Intermediate Speed is intended for chip design environments that have a low plotting load or are designing smaller or less complex devices.
HyperPlot: Full Speed is the workhorse of the worldwide semiconductor industry and is the rasteriser purchased by over 70% of our users. This version of HyperPlot is four times faster than Intermediate Speed, and, like all versions of HyperPlot, is not limited by file size or plot size.
HyperPlot e-Pack
Existing and new HyperPlot users can upgrade their HyperPlot license with the e-Pack bundle for Internet and general publishing capability. The e-Pack includes PostScript, GIF, TIF, PDF, and JPEG inputs; and, includes HyperViewer mark-up previewer plus the PostScript and PCL output drivers. The e-Pack now makes it simple and easy to accomplish the general publishing tasks of your organisation through HyperPlot along with integration to the commonly used Internet graphics formats, and drivers for your desktop printers to complement wide format plotters. Turn your printing and plotting engine into a full capability e-publishing tool with HyperPlot e-Pack.
Full Cadence Database Integration
HyperPlot offers true, direct integration to the Cadence database. Customers on a tight schedule cannot afford the translation time to GDS-II before beginning the rasterisation process. Many parts of the Virtuoso database cannot be converted to GDS-II and are thus lost in a translation. HyperPlot is tightly integrated integrated to the Cadence environment providing full database access, allowing the customer to print the actual design data, eliminate errors associated with conversion, and remove the time associated with the data translation.
The interface to the Cadence database comes in two parts:
HyperCDS: Provided as a network license, this software module is the floating graphical user interface that provides HyperPlot within the Cadence environment. The module floats allowing anyone in the network access to HyperPlot for plot submission.
HyperCDB: This module, the CDB rasteriser, is the heart of the Cadence interface and allows full interpretation of the Cadence design database. This module allows for the printing of all elements of the physical design and schematic data, providing a complete plotting solution for the Cadence user. Coupling this direct database access with HyperPlot provides the user with a higher speed, accuracy, flexibility, and over 100 integrated circuit specific plotting features developed with the guidance of our worldwide users.
Full Bi-directional PostScript Integration
HyperPlot provides full PostScript integration for both input and output of data. This means that the user can both read PostScript files of any size into HyperPlot, and, is able to print any design data format such as MEBES, GDS-II Stream, or Cadence database to PostScript printing devices. This provides a better utilisation of printing devices and more flexibility to get the most from your printing assets. PostScript integration for HyperPlot opens up the customer's printing world to accommodate data from virtually any application, and the ability to direct that data to any kind of output device.
The PostScript integration capability is provided in two parts:
HyperPSI: This PostScript input module allows unlimited size PostScript files to be rasterised by HyperPlot. Without limitation of file size, this means that the customer can print any size file on the customer's current plotter without the need for additional plotter memory.
HyperPSD: This PostScript output driver module provides the capability to print data on any PostScript device. The features from this module includes support for PDF files, raster image brightness controls, gamma correction controls, raster/vector merge control, and improved memory usage.
HyperPlot's full PostScript integration allows you to get the most from your plotting and printing tools without the need to learn multiple software printing tools.
HyperViewer WYSIWIG Plot Previewer/Editor
HyperViewer allows for not only the high speed viewing of the rasterised data prior to print, but is also enhanced to provide full markup, editing, and annotation of the plot including resizing, windowing, standard as well as a spatially organised index to view multi-stripped plots, the ability to preset default preferences, and a "Save As" feature. The HyperViewer is a tremendous, time saving, material saving, and customisation tool.
HyperPlot Input Formats
New functionality is continually added to HyperPlot through additional input formats to provide a complete and versatile solution for your printing and plotting requirements. HyperPlot offers these file input formats:
GDS-II Stream |
PDF |
Cadence Database |
GIF |
PostScript |
TIF |
MEBES |
JPEG |
CIF |
HP-GL/2 |
Hardware and Operating Systems Compatibility
HyperPlot runs on the following architectures:
AIX 4.x, HP HP/UX 9 and above, Solaris, Microsoft Windows 2000 and NT, and Linux
Systems Requirements:
HyperPlot requires the following minimum configuration to run:
64 MB RAM (minimum 30 MB of available hard disk space for full installation)
200 MB of available hard disk space for full installation
200 MB of virtual memory
Supported Output Devices:
Calcomp, Encad, Hewlett Packard, Selex, Xerox, Versatec, PostScript devices, PCL desktop printers, HP-RTL compatible devices
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HyperPlot Datasheet 
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