The meticulous process of electronic design automation (EDA) requires huge amounts of processing power and is usually done on large workstations ensconced in climate-controlled labs. But thanks to technological changes over the last six months, engineers are now able to stand up and walk away -- working with colleagues in other offices or designing products just about anywhere. Appropriately, chip manufacturers themselves are using some of the most sophisticated mobile EDA solutions to design the next generation of PC and workstation processors.

EDA is an umbrella term for a number of types of electrical design functions, including computer-aided design, engineering, and manufacturing (commonly known by the respective acronyms CAD, CAE, and CAM). It's used to design and build everything from circuit boards to integrated circuits. By making the EDA process more mobile, engineers can take advantage of better collaboration and increased flexibility.

IBM and Intel are currently conducting an EDA pilot program with portable Linux workstations that let engineers to design and collaborate while away from their offices. The platform combines the strengths of Intel's Centrino mobile technology, IBM's ThinkPad notebooks, and Cadence Design Systems' software. Last month in San Diego, Cadence, IBM, and Intel representatives demonstrated the solution at the Design Automation Conference, an international meeting of electronics design professionals.

The collaboration revolves around IBM's latest mobile workstation, the ThinkPad T42p, released in May. The T Series is IBM's in-between ThinkPad, more powerful than the smallest and lightest models but -- at under 6 pounds and about 1 inch thin -- more portable than the heftiest desktop replacements. The T42p is the workstation configuration, featuring high-resolution displays -- 1,400 by 1,050 for the 14.1-inch and 1,600 by 1,200 for the 15.0-inch LCD -- and ATI Technologies' Mobility FireGL T2 AGP 8X graphics controller with 128MB of display memory.

IBM brags that the 15.0-inch Flexview screen offers a 170-degree viewing angle, well-suited for collaborative design environments, while ThinkVantage technologies -- such as an automotive airbag-type sensor that detects sudden acceleration if the laptop is dropped and parks the hard disk before hitting the floor -- help protect data when mission-critical schematics are taken outside the cubicle.

Big Blue gives credit to Intel's mobile CPU engineers for advancing the state of portable power. According to IBM, the 90-nanometer-process Pentium M 735 (1.7GHz), 745 (1.8GHz), and 755 (2.0GHz) chips that debuted in May, with higher clock speeds and 2MB of on-chip Level 2 cache, have hiked performance by as much as 17 percent compared with Intel's previous-generation processor.