On Dec 7, 2007, at 3:45 AM, Dan McMahill wrote: > John Doty wrote: >> On Dec 6, 2007, at 2:46 PM, Steve Meier wrote: >> >>> As long as its semantics is well enough deffined that I can write a >>> macro to read and write its file formats then why not? >> >> It might be nice, but who knows what it is, and how to reasonably map >> it onto our problem? Al's always selling Verilog. But I went and >> bought the book he recommended on Verilog-AMS, and it was mostly more >> sales pitch. >> >> I AM REALLY TIRED OF THE VERILOG SALES PITCH. >> >> Is there any *substance* here beyond the digital HDL? >> >> Al, *show* us something *real*. I don't necessarily mean you need to >> write something: a pointer to something would be just fine (as long >> as it's not just more pitch). But the more you push what seems to be >> vapor, the more I'm going to ignore it. And I suspect I'm not the >> only one... > > I use verilog-A quite a bit and it is a huge benefit to me in real > world > (not just CAD vendor white paper) applications. Here is a simple > example. You can generate a much more complex stimulus to drive a > circuit under test with. Yes you could use <insert external program > name here> to generate piecewise linear source, but it really can be > much more convenient to have it integrated with the simulator. Also, > suppose the source needs to react to some signal in the test > schematic. > PWL sources don't do that. Verilog-A does. Before I had access to > AMS, I had several cases where Verilog-AMS had exactly the missing > feature I needed to greatly simplify and expand some simulation > coverage. > > I think a big part of the issue here is this: > > - there are no verilog-AMS implementations which are freely > available or > even priced in the few thousand dollar range. > > - there are no verilog-A implementations which are freely available. > I'm not sure if you can get one for a few thousand or not.
But even worse for the purpose of understanding its possible use in gEDA, it seems impossible to find real information and practical examples. There's a lot of hype. but where is the *substance*? > > The end result is unless you're spending 10's of thousands on CAD > software, you don't have access to these tools and as such people are > not using them for hobby projects. It's not just hobby projects. I'm a professional physicist, and the things I design are state of the art scientific instruments, but I'm not a full time circuit designer and I don't have the EDA tool budget that a full time designer would have. gEDA has been extremely valuable to me. > Since the projects using those tools > are all proprietary, there is little opportunity for users here to > give > much more information beyond "these tools are worthwhile". No > concrete > examples. Besides, its not like most people here could run a concrete > example anyway because of the lack of an implementation that is > even in > the "pretty darn expensive but I want one at home anyway" price range. > > I could spend time an put together a non-proprietary example, but it > would be a fair amount of effort because to fully appreciate the > capability you need a problem of some complexity. And then at the end > of the day I'd have an example that can't be run until gnucap has > verilog-A or verilog-AMS. I for one am thrilled at how much Al is > working towards having that capability. If it's anything like as good as Al claims it will be, I will be happy to use it. But I have little confidence, given the present low signal to noise ratio. John Doty Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd. http://www.noqsi.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user