Subject: Re: Checking for dimensional consistency in VHDL-AMS models
From: David Barton (dlb@wash.averstar.com)
Date: Tue Dec 21 1999 - 03:18:47 PST
Mark Zwolinski writes:
The one thing I was not suggesting doing at this stage was to
change VHDL! My suggestion (and it's no more than a suggestion) is
that IF a package such as the one I posted were defined and IF
users were willing to stick to the discipline of writing models
using such subtypes, then it would be relatively simple for a
parser to extract the dimension attribute for each variable or
quantity and to perform a dimensionality check. I have discussed
this briefly with a compiler writer. We don't reckon it's a major
problem. This could be implemented in a matter of weeks (well,
months). A change to VHDL will take years!
You make me point even harder into Pizza, which uses a front end to
take a richer type system including polymorphism, higher order
functions, and algebraic data types into Java. I don't know if it
would work with VHDL or not --- I haven't looked at it --- but these
are the kinds of techniques we could look at.
http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/wadler/papers/pizza/pizza11.ps.gz
Dave Barton <*>
dlb@averstar.com )0(
http://www.averstar.com/~dlb
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