The discussion on my previous blog post about “the ideal ESL language” made me think some more about the purpose of a hardware modeling or description language. If you look closely, you realize that there are two quite different goals being pursued by the tools and languages discussed there.
On one hand, we have the task of supporting the design of new hardware bits, for the purpose of creating it. On the other hand, we have the task of describing a particular design for the purpose of simulating it. These two are not necessarily the same.
Now I am home again, and some days have passed since the 
In the