Re:Verifying ARM processors against the official ARM specifi...
by aninhumer on Wednesday July 27, 2016 @08:02PM
(#12177443)
Again, those are software concepts. That's not what I'm talking about.
The point is, there are many hardware level constructions (FIFOs, BRAMs, CAMs, etc.) which can be very usefully abstracted.
And you use a software language to do it, simply because the hardware languages are so bad at it. There's no reason a HDL couldn't be good at expressing these abstractions (indeed Bluespec exists and does a fairly good job), but since they don't, using a programming language simply as a metalanguage is still better than actual HDLs.
The point is, there are many hardware level constructions (FIFOs, BRAMs, CAMs, etc.) which can be very usefully abstracted.
And you use a software language to do it, simply because the hardware languages are so bad at it. There's no reason a HDL couldn't be good at expressing these abstractions (indeed Bluespec exists and does a fairly good job), but since they don't, using a programming language simply as a metalanguage is still better than actual HDLs.