Re: [vhdl-200x] Re: What's next in VHDL

On 29/03/11 4:52 AM, Jim Lewis wrote:
> I think we need to go back to our Ada roots as much as is practical.
> I do think protected types will probably result in VHDL OO in a
> having a different encapsulation syntax. It appears that Ada-2005 has
> made the Ada OO model similar to other OO languages.
> There is some good stuff on Ada at:
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/All_Chapters

I like the bit about the root and the wikibook page is useful. It was also
mostly Ada-93 that implemented OO. VHDL's Ada roots are Ada83, without all
the OO. Ada has diverged from the common roots used for VHDL-87, which had
about 60 percent of the text in common with the first Ada manual, albeit
with section reordering.

See:
http://www.adaic.org/resources/add_content/standards/05rat/html/Rat-1-2.html
The rationale, scope of the revision(s).

And:
http://people.cs.kuleuven.be/~dirk.craeynest/ada-belgium/docs/rm83/lrm-TOC.html

An HTML version of Ada83 LRM

This shows the syntax mapping between the Ada83 and VHDL87 with manual
section references in both:

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA247904&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) Hardware Description Language
(VHDL) Syntax and Semantics Summary
[PDF] from dtic.milMT Mills - 1991 - oai.dtic.mil

In 1987 a paper was published

Translation of VHDL to Ada
CF Schaefer - Proceedings of the Joint Ada conference fifth national …, 1987
- portal.acm.org

I went through the first VHDL class at Steve Carlson's company and got a
copy of
http://books.google.com/books?id=YAAGQx3uSRsC&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&
VHDL: Hardware Description and Design by Lipsett, Schaefer and Ussery

which mentions the VHDL to ADA translator mentioned above as being the
first deliverable in 1987. I do recall talking to someone in the Air Force
about struggling with the tools on tapes before that, running on a main frame.

Makes you wonder if there's a solution there moving the standard version
pointers forward, translating and mixing a little Ada in. ;-)

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