IBM and Intel this week will introduce a mobile workstation pilot aimed at electronic design engineers who need to go mobile.
The pilot includes IBMs ThinkPad notebooks running on Intels highest-speed Pentium M processors. The pilot uses software from Cadence Design Systems that runs on Linux.
Some potential customers said such a solution is more complicated than simply making sure the hardware can process the data.
“It becomes a coordination effort because I need to ensure that what Im working on is not being worked on by someone else,” said Steven Klass, CAD technical manager at National Semiconductor. “Were talking hundreds of thousands of files for a single chip design. You need to make sure this coordination works seamlessly.”
IBM Global Services will be offering custom deployments of the electronic design automation workstation package. The system does not yet support WLANs because Intels Centrino chip set supports only Microsofts Windows operating system. However, Centrino support for Linux is due later this year.
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