Application of object-orientation to HDL-based designs

The increase in the scale of VLSI circuits over the last two decades has been of great importance to the development process. To cope with this ever­growing design complexity. new development techniques and methodologies have been researched and applied. The early 90's have witnessed the uptake of a new kind of design methodology based on Hardware Description Languages (HDL). This methodology has helped to master the possibilities inherent in our ability to manufacture ever-larger designs. However. while HDL based design methodology is sufficient to address today's standard ASIC sizes, it reaches its limits when considering tomorrow's design scales. Already. RISC processor chip descriptions can contain tens of thousands of HDLlines. Object-Oriented design methodology has recently had a considerable Impact in the software design community as it is tightly coupled with the handling of complex systems. Object-Orientation concentrates on data rather than functions since. throughout the design process. data are more stable than functions. Methodologies for both hardware and software have been introduced through the application of HDLs to hardware design. Common design constructs and principles that have proved successful in software language development should therefore be considered in order to assess their suitability for HDLs based designs. A new methodology was created to emphasise on encapsulation. abstraction and classification of designs. using standard VHDL constructs. This achieves higher levels of modelling along with an Improved reusability through design inheritance. The development of extended semantics for integrating Object-Orientation in the VHDL language is described. Comparisons are made between the modelling abilities of the proposed extension and other competing proposals. A UNIX based Object-Oriented to standard VHDL pre-processor is described along with translation techniques and their issues related to synthesis and simulation. This tool permitted validation of the new design methodology by application to existing design problems

Abstract State Machines 1988-1998: Commented ASM Bibliography

An annotated bibliography of papers which deal with or use Abstract State Machines (ASMs), as of January 1998.Comment: Also maintained as a BibTeX file at http://www.eecs.umich.edu/gasm

EOOLT 2007 – Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Equation-Based Object-Oriented Languages and Tools

Computer aided modeling and simulation of complex systems, using components from multiple application domains, such as electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, control, etc., have in recent years witness0065d a significant growth of interest. In the last decade, novel equation-based object-oriented (EOO) modeling languages, (e.g. Mode- lica, gPROMS, and VHDL-AMS) based on acausal modeling using equations have appeared. Using such languages, it has become possible to model complex systems covering multiple application domains at a high level of abstraction through reusable model components. The interest in EOO languages and tools is rapidly growing in the industry because of their increasing importance in modeling, simulation, and specification of complex systems. There exist several different EOO language communities today that grew out of different application areas (multi-body system dynamics, electronic circuit simula- tion, chemical process engineering). The members of these disparate communities rarely talk to each other in spite of the similarities of their modeling and simulation needs. The EOOLT workshop series aims at bringing these different communities together to discuss their common needs and goals as well as the algorithms and tools that best support them. Despite the short deadlines and the fact that this is a new not very established workshop series, there was a good response to the call-for-papers. Thirteen papers and one presentation were accepted to the workshop program. All papers were subject to reviews by the program committee, and are present in these electronic proceedings. The workshop program started with a welcome and introduction to the area of equa- tion-based object-oriented languages, followed by paper presentations and discussion sessions after presentations of each set of related papers. On behalf of the program committee, the Program Chairmen would like to thank all those who submitted papers to EOOLT'2007. Special thanks go to David Broman who created the web page and helped with organization of the workshop. Many thanks to the program committee for reviewing the papers. EOOLT'2007 was hosted by the Technical University of Berlin, in conjunction with the ECOOP'2007 conference

An evolutionary approach to the use of Petri net based models: from parallel controllers to HW/SW co-design

"A workshop within the 19th International Conference on Applications and Theory of Petri Nets - ICATPN’1998"The main purpose of this article is to present how Petri Nets (PNs) have been used for hardware design at our research laboratory. We describe the use of PN models to specify synchronous parallel controllers and how PN speci cations can be extended to include the behavioural description of the data path, by using object-oriented concepts. Some hierarchical mechanisms which deal with the speci cation of complex digital systems are highlighted. It is described a design flow that includes, among others, the automatic generation of VHDL code to synthesize the control unit of the system. The use of PNs as part of a multiple-view model within an object-oriented methodology for hardware/software codesign is debated. The EDgAR-2 platform is considered as the recon gurable target architecture for implementing the systems and its main characteristics are shown

A generic debug interface for IP-integrated assertions

Der Entwurf von Hardware/Software Systemen ist auf eine solide Verifikationsmethodik angewiesen, die den ganzen Design Flow durchzieht. Viele Konzepte haben eine Erhöhung des Abstraktionsniveaus bei der Entwurfseingabe gemeinsam, wobei der modell-basierte Hardware-Entwurf einen vielversprechenden und sich verbreitenenden Ansatz darstellt. Assertion basierte Verifikation ermöglicht dem Entwickler die Spezifikation von Eigenschaften des Entwurfes und die Aufdeckung von Fällen, in denen diese verletzt werden. Während Assertions in Entwurfs- und Simulationsstadien weit verbreitet sind, ist der Ansatz, diese mit auf dem integrierten Schaltkreis (IC) zu fertigen, neuartig. In dieser Diplomarbeit soll ein von Infineon Technologies entwickeltes, auf UML basierendes Datenmodell, welches zur Erfassung von Entwurfsspezifikation und zur automatischen Code-Generierung genutzt wird dahingehend erweitert werden, die Beschreibung für im IC integrierte Assertions zu ermöglichen. Für diese Zwecke wird ein abstraktes Datenmodell beschrieben werden. Das Assertion Interface soll die spezifikationsgetreue Modellintegration gewährleisten, sowie IC interne Assertionresultate dem umgebenen System über das Interface zugänglich machen und damit zum Debugging während der Laufzeit ermöglichen. Ferner werden die Codegenerierungs Templates erläutert und einBeispielsystem eingeführt, um die beschriebenden Konzepte zu validieren.Nowadays electronic systems design requires fast time to market and solid verification throughout the entire design flow. Many concepts have been researched to raise the level of abstraction during the design entry phase, whereas model-based design is the most promising one. Assertion-based verification enables the developer to specify properties of the design and to get report if these are violated. Assertions are common during development and simulation of electronic products but often are not included in the final silicon. In this thesis an UML-based model defined at Infineon Technologies for capturing design specification information and to generate code automatically using templates, will be extended to allow the description of an abstract debuggable assertion interface for silicon assertions. With help of the assertion interface it shall be possible to verify the correct module integration and to monitor IP-internal assertion checker results. Besides, the code-generation templates for the assertion interface model will be described. To demonstrate the usability of the developed concepts an example system will be introduced to validate the approach.Ilmenau, Techn. Univ., Diplomarbeit, 200

An evolutionary approach to the use of petri net based models : from parallel controllers to Hw/Sw codesign

The main purpose of this article is to present how Petri Nets (PNs) have been used for hardware design at our research laboratory. We describe the use of PN models to specify synchronous parallel controllers and how PN specifications can be extended to include the behavioural description of the data path, by using object-oriented concepts. Some hierarchical mechanisms which deal with the specification of complex digital systems are highlighted. It is described a design flow that includes, among others, the automatic generation of VHDL code to synthesize the control unit of the system. The use of PNs as part of a multiple-view model within an object-oriented methodology for hardware/software codesign is debated. The EDgAR-2 platform is considered as the reconfigurable target architecture for implementing the systems and its main characteristics are shown

ARGG-HDL: A High Level Python Based Object-Oriented HDL Framework

We present a High-Level Python-based Hardware Description Language (ARGG-HDL), It uses Python as its source language and converts it to standard VHDL. Compared to other approaches of building converters from a high-level programming language into a hardware description language, this new approach aims to maintain an object-oriented paradigm throughout the entire process. Instead of removing all the high-level features from Python to make it into an HDL, this approach goes the opposite way. It tries to show how certain features from a high-level language can be implemented in an HDL, providing the corresponding benefits of high-level programming for the user