Parallel EDA tools from DAC

DAC had a few sessions this year on multi-core processors, and how they were going to be used in electronic design automation. History buffs will note that there's actually some prior work in the area. For example....

• Performance of a parallel algorithm for standard cell placement on the Intel hypercube by M. Jones and P. Banerjee..... from DAC 87
  
• Massively parallel switch-level simulation: a feasibility study by Kravitz, Bryant, Rutenbar, DAC 89
  
• and of course there's a good tutorial: Tutorial on parallel processing for design automation applications (tutorial session) from DAC 86.
  

This is the tip of the iceberg. These papers are easy to find. Here's a link to the ACM portal for papers that have the word parallel in the title. Lots out there. Strangely, these don't get cited in the current work.

If we want to make EDA tools parallel, and there are stacks of papers of papers from the past 20 years on precisely that topic... why not just recompile what we have? Why not cite the prior work? Check out the current crop of papers -- and in particular the references. Not enough people doing their homework, if you ask me....