Picture four engineers sitting together at the coffee bar of an engineering conference in the North of England.

CS: Ahh excellent, this, most excellent.

LG: There's nothing like a good cup of fresh espresso!

JK: You're right there, Louis.

HR: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here talkin' about state of the art layout tools?

CS: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a latte.

LG: A cup of cold latte.

HR: Without milk or sugar.

JK: Or coffee.

CS: In a cheap cardboard disposable cup at that.

JK: But you know, we were happy in those days, even though we had no timing-driven, state of the art, fully automated, place and route, paramaterized cell, connectivity-driven layout tools.

LG: Aye, I remember the days when all we had to use were state of the art, fully automated, place and route, paramaterized cell, connectivity-driven layout tools. None of this timing-driven nonsense!!

JK: You were lucky to even have connectivity-driven tools. All we had were automated, place and route, with limited stretchable cell functionality.

CS: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of place and route tools. I had to place ten million gates by hand and wire them up in under a month.

LG: Well when I say "place and route tools" all it could handle were 5000 gates and we had to lay...