First cut at BTF proposal to P1800

From: Kathy McKinley (mckinley@cadence.com)
Date: Thu Jul 29 2004 - 09:14:13 PDT

  • Next message: Kathy McKinley: "Re: First cut at BTF proposal to P1800"

    Hello everyone,

    Below is a first cut at a proposal for the IEEE 1364 BTF to send to
    the IEEE P1800 working group.

    We will begin an email vote on this proposal on Friday. Please send your
    suggestions for changes to the proposal as soon as possible. I suggest
    that we set 10:00 am EDT as the cutoff for revision requests, so that
    we can finalize the wording and begin our email ballot.

    Thanks,

    Kathy

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    The IEEE 1364 Behavioral Task Force (BTF) is writing to request that
    the new IEEE organization make a provision for continuing our work
    on Verilog/SystemVerilog datatypes.

    The datatypes subgroup of the IEEE 1364 BTF was formed in anticipation
    of the donation of the Accellera 3.1a specification to the IEEE to
    ensure that the proposed extensions to Verilog datatypes in 3.1a are
    incorporated into the Verilog base language in a consistent and useful
    way. The charter of this group includes the definition of objects that
    have storage, values, and operations on those values.

    The focus of the BTF has been on extending the data type extensions
    defined in 3.1a to nets and resolving inconsistencies between the two
    specifications that would inhibit integration. Since this work covers
    both IEEE 1364-2001 and 3.1a it cannot be logically segregated to one or
    the other.

    The extension of new datatypes to nets is a product of the orthogonality
    principle that was unanimously endorsed by the BTF. Datatype orthogonality
    means that the update semantics of an object and the set of values that
    the object can have are independent of one another. Under the principle
    of datatype orthogonality, a value set for an object can be specified
    (the set of real numbers, a set of structure values, etc.) separately
    from the update semantics of the object (variable, net, etc.). This
    principle is a key element of language design that strengthens its
    usability.

    It is important to provide a forum in which to continue this work within
    the working group to ensure that a consistent, standard solution is
    developed and adopted by the WG to avoid the risk that variant
    implementations will arise. Having this work done under the auspices
    and direction of the P1800 WG will allow that group to guide and
    determine the organization and schedule of this work so as not to impede
    progress in other areas.

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