At least on the higher bandwidth part of things. Allegro as far as I know, is still the leader if you want to do anything in the GHz arena. I do believe we used a VMEBus and a 68000 based system, not sure if we were using OS9 or lynxOS but some kind of real time OS, it's 20 years ago so I don't really remember. We used Allegro to develop a 3GHz capable token ring fiber optic network for medical imaging with in house build hardware and software back in 93. I believe Cadence still have an educational track for only for qualified Universities.
I don't recall how much we paid for allegro (Cadence) if anything, could have been free at the time, for example the cost per seat for a student for all the M$ software was only $10. Actually I was also part of the software purchasing committee.
When I used to work as staff at UNI doing research (many moons ago when I was an IEEE and SPIE member as well) educational prices were available for all staff, faculty and students. Meaning you could be the janitor and still qualify AFAIK. Now they are just creeping back up and up againĮducational prices used to be available to not only students but also (reads: specially) to staff and faculty. It's funny, I can remember Nick Martin standing up in the front of the entire company when they slashed the price by 70% or something ($12K down to $3K?) and said "We are burning our bridges, there is no way we can go back to high priced software". They do everything they can to lock you into a subscription. Also, without paying subscription you don't get access to libraries now, but I could be wrong about that? Also, if you start subscription and then stop, and then want to take it up again in order to get some new release you like, you have to pay a big penalty, or the full amount again. Altium coped a lot of flack at one point for not releasing anything in the year people paid subscription, so their money was wasted. Or you pay an additional few $K each year for a "subscription" that keeps you updated with whatever they release in that time. You have to pay the $9K at first, and then either chose to pay nothing more and never get any update (even bug fixes last I checked), that's called a "perpetual license".
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