Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Esprit project # 881 — Forfun Formal Description of Digital and Analog Systems by means of Functional Languages

1990; Editions Esprit; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-94-009-0705-8_16

2111-4579

Raymond Boute,

Embedded Systems Design Techniques

The origin of this project is the observation that systems and circuits are not computational processes and that, therefore, programming language concepts are inadequate for their description. The function notation commonly used in engineering for dealing with signals and systems constitutes a better linguistic basis, especially w.r.t. clarity in description and convenience in (transformational) reasoning and system design.The goals (and results) of the project are the design and implementation of a prototype description language (Glass) for analog and digital circuits, together with a supporting environment (Glue). The chosen approach was system semantics, which allows to associate with a single language (based on function notation) a diversity of interpretations, expressing relevant system properties such as structure, behaviour, performance (e.g. timing), cost.Conclusions of the project are that the combination of functional notation and system semantics yields the expected advantages over traditional programming language constructs, and that the principles embodied by Glass will prove very useful in the design future system description languages such as the restandardization of VHDL scheduled for 1992. The implementation of the Glass language and its environment together with extensive documentation are available at reproduction cost from any of the project partners.