Subject: Re: [vhdl-200x] Language bloat
From: John Willis (john.willis@ftlsys.com)
Date: Mon Jul 21 2003 - 09:33:59 PDT
Andy,
Your suggestion to focus on empowering mechanisms rather than on
specific solutions makes a great deal of sense (and is in the
spirit of VHDL).
FTL's next-generation VHDL-X(tm) support includes type-based
generics for just this reason. It enabled numerous constructs
such as fault-tolerant and numerical libraries which could be
applied to arbitrary base types via user-alterable packages.
Generic support came from an EC-funded collaboration with
Alcatel, Fiat and two universities.
As the IEEE VHDL-2000x effort, we have discussed the possibility
of FTL making this extension available to the IEEE committee. I
hope that we will have feedback on this soon; informal feedback
has been supportive.
John Willis
VHDL-2000x Type Enhancement "Coordinator"
--On Monday, July 21, 2003 09:10:31 AM -0500 Andy D Jones
<andy.d.jones@lmco.com> wrote:
> I couldn't agree more. Rather than providing point solutions to
> problems, we should concentrate on issues that preclude useful solutions
> in the present language. In the FIFO example, the main problem is one of
> data types. In the current VHDL, one can create a parameterizable FIFO
> of any dimension, with paramerizable flags, etc., but it must be of a
> pre-determined type of storage. If we were to borrow the type-based
> genericity from ada, as has been proposed before by others, we would have
> a powerful tool to create such useful, flexible solutions to common
> problems without extending the language for each solution.
>
> Andy Jones
> Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control
> Dallas TX
>
> Scott Thibault wrote:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> There seems to be a substantial list of features that are being
>> considered for inclusion in the next VHDL, and I wonder if it would not
>> be a good idea to check ourselves on this issue of language bloat. I've
>> spent a good amount of time studying domain-specific languages, and
>> would like to share some of my thoughts about this issue. I think they
>> apply to our work as a whole but specifically there are a number of
>> things in the TBV group that should be considered, such as fifos.
>>
>> The primary distinction between a general-purpose language and a
>> domain-specific language, is that general-purpose languages strive to
>> provide powerful abstraction mechanisms (e.g., the ability to create
>> classes or functions), where as a domain-specific language attempts to
>> provide the right set of predefined abstractions for a given domain
>> (e.g., built-in primitives/types specific to the domain). I consider
>> VHDL to be kind of in between, what I call a domain-oriented language.
>> It is general purpose in the sense that you can write virtually any
>> program in VHDL (i.e. the design space is huge), but yet it has domain
>> specific features that make it particularly useful for a certain domain
>> of applications (i.e. event-driven simulation, which is still a large
>> domain). Our current effort will push VHDL even more towards the
>> general purpose of the spectrum by trying to enlarge the design space to
>> include testbench and system level design.
>>
>> Because VHDL tries to address multiple and large domains, I think it
>> would be unwise to attempt to provide predefined abstractions that will
>> be necessary for those domains, but rather focus on providing the
>> powerful abstraction mechanisms that will enable us to create the VHDL
>> packages needed for the various domains we are trying to address. For
>> example, rather than adding a predefined notion of a fifo in VHDL, why
>> not provide some kind of parameterized types that would allow us to
>> build a verification package that would allow users a convenient way to
>> create fifos?
>>
>> VHDL is already a large language, so these are some things to think
>> about.
>>
>> Regards,
>> --Scott Thibault
>> Green Mountain
>> Computing Systems, Inc.
>> http://www.gmvhdl.com
>>
>>
>>
>
>
-----------------------------------------------------------
John Willis jwillis@ftlsys.com
FTL Systems Inc. FTL Systems UK Ltd
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