Abstract
In efforts to overcome the complexity of the syntax and the lack of formal semantics of conventional hardware description languages, a number of functional hardware description languages have been developed. Like conventional hardware description languages, however, functional hardware description languages eventually convert all source programs into netlists, which describe wire connections in hardware circuits at the lowest level and conceal all high-level descriptions written into source programs.
We develop a variant of the lambda calculus, called lλ (linear lambda), which may serve as a high-level substitute for netlists. In order to support higher-order functions, lλ uses a linear type system which enforces the linear use of variables of function type. The translation of lλ into structural descriptions of hardware circuits is sound and complete in the sense that it maps expressions only to realizable hardware circuits and that every realizable hardware circuit has a corresponding expression in lλ. To illustrate the use of lλ as a high-level substitute for netlists, we design a simple hardware description language that extends lλ with polymorphism, and use it to implement a Fast Fourier Transform circuit.
Supplemental Material
Available for Download
Slides from the presentation
Supplemental material for: Functional netlists
- Emil Axelsson, Koen Claessen, and Mary Sheeran. Wired: wireaware circuit design. In Proceedings of Conference on Correct Hardware Design and Verification Methods (CHARME), volume 3725 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Verlag, 2005. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Per Bjesse, Koen Claessen, Mary Sheeran, and Satnam Singh. Lava: hardware design in Haskell. In Proceedings of the third ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming, pages 174--184. ACM Press, 1998. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Raymond T. Boute. Functional languages and their application to the description of digital systems. Journal A, 25(1):27--33, 1984.Google Scholar
- Luca Cardelli and Gordon Plotkin. An algebraic approach to VLSI design. In Proceedings of the VLSI 81 International Conference, pages 173--182, 1981.Google Scholar
- Koen Claessen and David Sands. Observable sharing for functional circuit description. In ASIAN '99: Proceedings of the 5th Asian Computing Science Conference on Advances in Computing Science, pages 62--73. Springer-Verlag, 1999. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Dan R. Ghica. Geometry of synthesis: a structured approach to VLSI design. In Proceedings of the 34th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages, pages 363--375. ACM Press, 2007. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Jim Grundy, Tom Melham, and John O'Leary. A reflective functional language for hardware design and theorem proving. Journal of Functional Programming, 16(2):157--196, 2006. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Steven D. Johnson. Applicative programming and digital design. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages, pages 218--227. ACM Press, 1984. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Geraint Jones and Mary Sheeran. Circuit design in Ruby. Formal Methods in VLSI Design, pages 13--70, 1990.Google Scholar
- Yanbing Li and Miriam Leeser. HML, a novel hardware description language and its translation to VHDL. IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 8(1):1--8, 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- John Matthews, Byron Cook, and John Launchbury. Microprocessor specification in Hawk. In Proceedings of the 1998 International Conference on Computer Languages, page 90. IEEE, 1998. Google ScholarDigital Library
- F. Meshkinpour and Milos D. Ercegovac. A functional language for description and design of digital systems: sequential constructs. In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM/IEEE conference on Design automation, pages 238--244. ACM press, 1985. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Alan Mycroft and Richard Sharp. A statically allocated parallel functional language. In ICALP '00: Proceedings of the 27th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, pages 37--48. Springer-Verlag, 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
- John J. O'Donnell. From transistors to computer architecture: Teaching functional circuit specification in Hydra. In Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Functional Programming Languages in Education, pages 195--214. Springer-Verlag, 1995. Google ScholarDigital Library
- John T. O'Donnell. Generating netlists from executable circuit specifications. In Proceedings of the 1992 Glasgow Workshop on Functional Programming, pages 178--194. Springer-Verlag, 1993. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Peter O'Hearn. On bunched typing. Journal of Functional Programming, 13(4):747--796, 2003. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Robin Sharp and Ole Rasmussen. Using a language of functions and relations for VLSI specification. In Proceedings of the seventh international conference on Functional programming languages and computer architecture, pages 45--54. ACM Press, 1995. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mary Sheeran. Hardware design and functional programming: a perfect match. The Journal of Universal Computer Science, 11 (7):1135--1158, 2005.Google Scholar
- Mary Sheeran. muFP, a language for VLSI design. In Proceedings of the 1984 ACM Symposium on LISP and functional programming, pages 104--112. ACM Press, 1984. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Functional netlists
Recommendations
Functional netlists
ICFP '08: Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programmingIn efforts to overcome the complexity of the syntax and the lack of formal semantics of conventional hardware description languages, a number of functional hardware description languages have been developed. Like conventional hardware description ...
Formal Design of Arithmetic Circuits Based on Arithmetic Description Language
This paper presents a formal design of arithmetic circuits using an arithmetic description language called ARITH. The key idea in ARITH is to describe arithmetic algorithms directly with high-level mathematical objects (i.e., number representation ...
Formal verification of cryptographic circuits: A semi-automatic functional approach
NISS '19: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Networking, Information Systems & SecurityThe complexity level of hardware design has increased extensively, and consequently it became subject of errors. That's why it is extremely important to verify the correctness of designs, especially in critical systems like those of security.
The ...
Comments