Simon de Graaf received in 1979 his Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical High School in Rijswijk, the Netherlands.
In March 1980, he joined the Network Theory Section of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, to work as a technical engineer under the supervision of Prof. P.M. Dewilde. The two main research topics were: Digital Signal Processing and Computer Aided Circuit Design.
First, he worked more on hardware interfaces for a DEC PDP-11/34 computer. This mini-computer was used in the lab. with RT-11 and RSX-11M. The computer languages used, were: Macro-11 Assembler and Fortran.
There was also an IBM mainframe on a central place in the Delft University. Which was used by the students to run simulation programs (like SPICE). There was also a learning phase, to use other computer languages (Algol and Pascal). Later on, UNIX and its programming language C came in the lab. (first on the PDP-11/34).
Later on, faster computers came (DEC VAX and Gould PN6000 and HP 9000 series 800). Research in Micro Electronics (CACD) became an important research topic. A lot of design software were developed (the NELSIS ICD system and CAD Framework).
Later on, workstations came in the group (HP and Sun).
Design software of other companies were also used (Mentor, Compass, Cadence, Synopsis).
I am also involved in design coarses (as technical specialist).
First designing with NELSIS and the Ocean system.
Later on, designing with VHDL and using the Ocean routing and the Space verification system.
And now, i am using a PC (DELL T3400) with openSUSE 11.4 Linux and supporting the Space ICD system.