Subject: Re: New vote on SUAVE or Objective VHDL
From: Mark Zwolinski (mz@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Jun 26 2000 - 01:48:50 PDT
John Michael Williams wrote:
>
(... Long exchange of views deleted...)
Dear all,
This is degenerating into an argument that will leave most readers cold.
There's some truth to what both parties are saying. It might be helpful
to recall a parallel.
The work on analogue extensions to VHDL started in circa 1991. This work
was getting stuck in a rut. There were prototype implementations of
ideas (one of which was actually marketed). In about 1995, the working
group made a call for proposals (i.e. draft standards) to get the
process started again. Two proposals came forward. They were read and
voted on by the discussion group. A standard then emerged and was agreed
last year. The commercial implementations of VHDL-AMS are all complete
reimplementations.
It seems to me that almost exactly the same process is happening with
OOVHDL. I have some misgivings about what is in both proposals. Having
now tried to write VHDL-AMS models, I have some criticisms of that
standard. Those doubts did not emerge until working implementations of
the software were released. Realistically, whatever results from the
OOVHDL work, its strengths and weaknesses will not be clear until people
start using it for real. We need the prototypes to try out ideas, but I
hope the prototypes will be ditched once the ideas are worked out.
The alternative to this process is to do what the Verilog guys do and
write a standard as a small group then send it out fully-formed into the
world. You get a standard that way; the EDA vendors can then release
tools very soon after the standard is approved, but it won't necessarily
reflect the ideas of the wider community. I much prefer the way that
VHDL standards are worked out and I think the OOVHDL work is following
that pattern.
Mark
-- =================================================================== Dr Mark Zwolinski Electronic System Design Group Tel. (+44) (0)23 8059 3528 Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science Fax. (+44) (0)23 8059 2901 University of Southampton Email. mz@ecs.soton.ac.uk Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~mz
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