Tag Archives: Dml

Describe is not the same as Design

2010 February 15 21:56 / 5 Comments /

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.

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Posted in: computer simulation technology, EDA, ESL, programming, virtual platforms / Tagged:

Notes from the IP 08 Panel

2008 December 6 22:31 / 3 Comments /

Now I am home again, and some days have passed since the IP 08 panel discussion about software and hardware virtual platforms. This was an EDA hardware-oriented conference, and thus the audience was quite interested in how to tie things to hardware design. Any case, it was a fun panel, and Pierre Bricaud did a good job of moderating and keeping things interesting.

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Posted in: appearances, computer simulation technology, conferences, EDA, ESL, programming, virtual platforms / Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Gary Stringham on Hardware Interface Design vs Virtual Platforms

2008 November 29 22:51 / 14 Comments /

I just read an interesting paper from the 2004 Embedded System’s Conference (ESC) written by Gary Stringham. It is called “ASIC Design Practices from a Firmware Perspective” and straddles the boundary between hardware design and driver software development. It was good to see someone take the viewpoint of “how you actually program a hardware device is as important as what it does”. Gary seems to understand both the hardware design and implementation view of things, as well as that of the embedded software engineer. To me, that seems to be a fairly rare combination of skills, to the detriment of our entire economy of computer system development.

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Posted in: EDA, embedded software, ESL, virtual platforms / Tagged: , , , , ,

Learning Linux Device Drivers on a Virtual PowerPC

2008 November 2 12:02 / 7 Comments /

There are times when working with virtual hardware and not real hardware feels very liberating and efficient (not to mention safe). Bringing up, modifying, and extending operating systems is one obvious such case. Recently, I have been preparing an open-source-based demonstration and education systems based on embedded PowerPC machines, and teaching myself how to do Linux device drivers in the process. This really brought out the best in virtual platform use.

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Posted in: embedded software, ESL, teaching, virtual platforms / Tagged: , , , , , ,

In Praise of Scripting: Something for Modeling as Well?

2008 August 3 22:40 / 5 Comments /

In the July 2008 issue of IEEE Computer, there is short article called “In Praise of Scripting: Real Programming Pragmatism“, by Ronald P. Loui, a professor at Washington University (WUSTL). The article deals with the issue of what is the appropriate first language to teach new CS (Computer Science) students, and considers that a “scripting” langauge like Python or Ruby might be way better than Java (no doubt about that I think).

The interesting material in the article is the background on WHY he thinks that this is the case. He points to the immense popularity and rise of scripting in much of computing land. In the past ten years, it is clear to him (and I would agree with this too mostly) that languages like Perl, PHP, Awk, Ruby, JavaScript, and Python have eclipse Java and C++ as the most interesting and important programming languages for many practical tasks. Especially for web applications, where Java seems to have a presence but noone would dream of using something as clunky and impractical as C.

What can this teach us for the purpose of simulation and the creation of models of computer system hardware for the purpose of simulation? Maybe a fair bit…

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Posted in: computer simulation technology, programming, virtual platforms / Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

SCDSource Article on Virtutech DML

2008 April 10 08:49 / Leave a Comment /

SCD Source LogoI have an article at SCDSource.com, about how virtual platform creation needs to become more efficient. And the Virtutech current solution to that issue, DML, Device Modeling Language. There is no need to repeat the contents here, just head over to www.scdsource.com/article.php?id=166 to read it! I really think that DML has something to contribute in the world of virtual platforms. We need to find ways to be more efficient about how to create models, and that means creating a better programming language.

So what is SCDSource? Is is a quite good news and analysis site about the electronics industry, EDA, virtual platforms, and other themes close to my heart. SCDSource was started in October 2007, and have produced a series of good and interesting articles since. They tend to actually write articles and not just repeat press releases, and to report form interesting panels at events like DATE, ESC, and Multicore Expo.

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