Distributed EDA tool integration: the PPP paradigm

We describe a paradigm for integrating EDA tools running on distributed platforms under a common user interface. We focus on interactive remote execution more than on simple information retrieval. Minimum support is required on the user side to access the features offered by a large and diverse set of tools: the user´s WWW browser is the interface for all interactions. Integrating new tools in the environment is a straightforward process that does not require any effort from the end users. The learning curve is extremely short because the well-known user interface provided by the WWW browser is exploited. PPP is a prototype we implemented to show the feasibility of WWW-based tool integration. We describe the features of PPP, its architecture and its implementation