I would disagree that integration with C is essential - far from it.
I've never found any reason to write test-benches in C rather than VHDL.
VHDL has all the features of C plus, has inherently a concept of
parallelism and inherently a concept of time.
The only real reason to interface with C is because a software engineer
has implemented an algorithm in C already that you want to use. This
certainly is a useful feature which GHDL has had for years and VHDL
generally has had from the start through it's ability to define foreign
functions. OK the VHPI developments in VHDL 2008 will probably
facilitate software-hardware co-simulation, but as a principle I've
found that VHDL is far more verstatile than C for writing testbenches.
The basic problem is that people learn VHDL for synthesis and assume
that is the whole language. In actual fact it is a rather small sub-set
of the language.
On 14/01/12 10:09, Walter F.J. Mueller wrote:
Hi,
it is nice to think about all kinds of implementation alternatives.
In all this keep in mind that integration with C language programs
is essential for the implementation any sort of test bench. I used
the VHPIDIRECT mechanism in ghdl for this to interface to plain C
code, and this is at the very core of most of my test benches.
I put it a little wider:
- when ghdl wants to survive on the long run it has to implement
also the major vhdl-2008 language features in the future.
- by the time vhdl-2008 is supported by synthesis tools one wants
to use some of them, and it be sad if the state of ghdl would
prevent that.
- vhpi and thus "C" code interfacing is now formally part of vhdl-2008.
vhpi and a well working C interface are indispensable functionalities
and any credible implementation alternative must be able to support this.
With best regards, Walter
On 01/14/2012 10:14 AM, Stephen Leake wrote:
"Dr. Douglas Lyon"<[email protected]> writes:
ADA is not a real popular language (like Java is).
That's spelled "Ada"; it's a name, not an acronym
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_programming).
The compiler should probably be ported to something like Java,
then VHDL could be a "write once, run anywhere" type language, and
that would be a hoot.
It is _far_ easier to learn Ada than to rewrite a program as complex as
a VHDL compiler.
It is possible to target the Java Virtual Machine with an Ada compiler
(http://www.adacore.com/home/products/gnatpro/multi-language/ada-java/).
That would be a better way to get "compile once, run anywhere".
Note that Ada is already "write once, compile anywhere, run anywhere".
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