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From: vsocci@netcom.com (Vance Socci)
Subject: Re: Retro-Computing!
Message-ID: <vsocciD6KqrL.CG2@netcom.com>
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References: <D6HILL.GAJ@bonkers.taronga.com> <vsocciD6IuJ9.46J@netcom.com> <D6JBr5.Hu1@bonkers.taronga.com> <3lu1a3$qpj@ns0.emc.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 1995 15:20:00 GMT
Lines: 52

walton@emc.com (John Walton) wrote:
>In article <D6JBr5.Hu1@bonkers.taronga.com>, peter@bonkers.taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>|> In article <vsocciD6IuJ9.46J@netcom.com>,
>|> Vance Socci <vsocci@netcom.com> wrote:
>|> >You're too late - National Instruments and Hewlett Packard have both
>|> >issued commercial level graphical lanaguages.
>|>
>|> ... for laboratory and other real-time control systems ...
>|>
>|> There's an application niche where they're well suited (the people using them
>|> are used to working with wires and components) and where they're simply an
>|> enhancement to the tools already being used (relay ladder logic).
>|>
>|> >Again: if typewriter languages were so great, why don't people design
>|> >hardware with them instead of using diagrams?
>
>We do now. At least for ASIC design, it's called: Hardware Description Language.
>I don't use schematics for ASIC design anymore, not even netlisting, it causes
>more trouble than it's worth.
>

I was afraid someone would bring this up . . . I'm aware of the logic languages
used for ASIC design. Personally, I think they're a step in the wrong direction
in terms of the type of language presented. I think it would be more cool
to actually draw out the registers and datapaths and gates at a level higher
than would normally be possible at the component level of the schematic.
For example, if you are used to doing hierarchical schematics, you could imagine
that the architecture level of the device you were designing could actually
be the language that compiled down into the ASIC programming mask.

You may even be able to write microcode this way . . . some kind of
incremental graphical language which described which data paths were
activated and where the data was intended to go.

I agree that a well designed text ASIC logic language can be better than
thinking of an organization of hundreds of gates and then having to
wire each darned gate up, sometimes with macros, in order to describe
what you're building. But it would be even better to just draw an n-bit
register or something in a graphical language and have that compile down
to the ASIC programming configuration.




- Vance

/=======================================\
|    Vance Socci   vsocci@netcom.com	|
| "The worst secrets are those we keep	|
|   from ourselves . . ."		|
| "I am not a number; I am a free man!	|
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