C – Observations from Uppsala

ChatGPT and Code

In my previous blog post about ChatGPT and Simics, I tested it on its knowledge and abilities with a fairly niche subject. Not unsurprisingly it did not do all that well. However, one area where ChatGPT appears to really work well is when dealing with program code. This seems more practically useful as well, especially as a generator of starting points and boiler-plate code. It can also sometimes do a decent job explaining code, subject to quite common bizarre mistakes and errors. Update: Part 3, a critique of ChatGPT has been published.

C in Danger – and thus Higher-Level Languages (?)

Some recent developments among development environments for mobile phones have made me consider the hereto unthinkable: that C might be on a decline as the universal programming language. Indeed, maybe there is even a chance that we will not have a universal low-level language in the future at all. What is happening is that the hitherto “given” role of C as the base language for a platform is being questioned. The reason appears to be security, which cannot be said to be a bad thing. However, a large-scale move away from C might hurt many of today’s higher-level languages and even model-based engineering.
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FFast: Good Idea, Too Bad About the Implementation

I just read a short paper by Antoine Trouvé and Kazuaki Murakami from the RAPIDO 2010 workshop on “rapid simulation and performance evaluation”. The paper is “FFast: Efficient Application of Compiled Simulation Techniques To A Fast ISS Over a Virtual Machine”. It explores the interesting idea of how an existing virtual machine infrastructure can be used to build a fast instruction-set simulator, and in the extension, a full system simulator.

To me, this idea is worth exploring, since using a mature VM like the .net CLR (used in this paper) or a JVM would offer a shortcut to get high-quality code generation for a JIT compiler. It could also offer other benefits, as these environments support many advanced configuration and management features. I have touched on this topic before, in the posts “Dream ESL Language” (VM as the basis for a simulator) and “The JVM as Universal Parallel Glue” (that a common VM can offer huge benefits for an ecosystem).

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Can we Rely on C?

whyc I have written several times on this blog about the odd propensity of the “EDA” business to consider the C and C++ languages “high level” languages. They are what I use almost daily for most of the demo-order programming I do, but I still don’t consider them very high-level. High-level for me is scripting (Python, Lua, …) or domain-specific languages (DML, Lex, Yacc, MatLab, …) or model-driven development (UML, LabView, Simulink, …) or languages which at least provide sensible and reasonably safe semantics (Erlang, Java, …).

However, in fact, most the embedded industry and the “virtual platform” industry rely on C and C++ to get our daily jobs done. Question is, how much longer can we expect to do that? An interesting post at Embedded.com by Michael Barr brought back my argument that modeling needs to move up in levels of abstraction just like mainstream programming.

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The Tyranny of Syntax on Stackoverflow

The 44th episode of the Stackoverflow podcast contains an interesting discussion on what I have liked to call “the tyranny of syntax”.They note that for some reason people are scared of anything that does not look like C, but still lament some of the less good design patterns in C, such as the fact that closing braces have no annotations as to what is being closed. They also talk about the use of “little languages”, and an old favorite song of mine.

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Is SoC (was: ESL) all there is to virtual platforms?

SystemC TLM-2.0 has just been released, and on the heels of that everyone in the EDA world is announcing various varieties of support. TLM-2.0-compliant models, tools that can run TLM-2.0 models, and existing modeling frameworks that are being updated to comply with the TLM-2.0 standard. All of this feeds a general feeling that the so-called Electronic System Level design market (according to Frank Schirrmeister of Synopsys, the term was coined by Gary Smith) is finally reaching a level of maturity where there is hope to grow the market by standards. This is something that has to happen, but it seems to be getting hijacked by a certain part of the market addressing the needs of a certain set of users.

There is more to virtual platforms than ESL. Much more. Remember the pure software people.

Edit: Maybe it is more correct to say “there is more to virtual platforms than SoC”, as that is what several very smart comments to this post has said. ESL is not necessarily tied to SoC, it is in theory at least a broader term. But currently, most tools retain an SoC focus.

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