Hiroki Sato
Hiroki Sato is an assistant professor at Institute of Science Tokyo. He is a member of the FreeBSD core team and has been a FreeBSD committer since 2001.
Session
This talk shares our experience in designing and deploying a FreeBSD-based platform that provides a runtime environment for EDA (electronic design automation) software. This project is supported by MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan) and aims to reinforce Japan’s semiconductor industry. The speaker has been responsible for the computer system component of the project.
The core platform was designed using FreeBSD, whereas most industry-standard semiconductor design and manufacturing tools are Linux-based. From an integrated circuit designer’s perspective, a common challenge is building and maintaining a workstation capable of running such software. One of the primary design goals was to create a system that is easy to use for students unfamiliar with Linux, while also minimizing the burden of system administration, which can otherwise become a barrier to education.
FreeBSD provides a number of mature technologies for virtualization and compartmentalization, and the system has been built on top of them. This talk covers how these technologies are used, as well as additional components that were developed to meet specific requirements. It also discusses the deployment strategy, which aims to make the platform available throughout Japan.