scott@labtam.oz (Scott Colwell) (08/13/90)
The reason we use palasm rather than a commercial package is that we use sccs (source code control system) and make(1) to control the changes and configuration of our pld hardware. At the time we made this decision, the commercial packages didn't run on the machines we were using (we make unix machines previously NS32000 and now Intel processors), so we took the source to palasm and hacked it somewhat and embedded it in a unix tool environment with things like the c preprocessor and some filters to translate state machine descriptions to equations and to simplify equations. This environment allows us to program pals with a high level of abstraction but has a number of problems. These being maintaining the software and supporting new devices. On the flip side of course we can control things like ensuring that the sccs revision identifier string gets into the jedec file to ensure traceability (and into the signature bytes of the device would be nice too :-) or other non-obvious enhancements. Sorry for the tedious leadup but I would like some information from the users of commercial packages on their fitness (the packages, not the users:-) for being used in an environment with sccs and make as a replacement for us. 1. Do any packages allow batch operation ? (this would allow make files to control compiling a design.) 2. Do any packages give the user the ability to define 'don't cares' in equations ? (e.g. perhaps I know that a particular set of input values connot occur when a state machine is is in a particular state. This gives the equation simplifier more scope to minimise the equations.) 3. Do any of the packages perform multiple equation simplification rather than single equation at a time ? (This is useful when working with fpga and fpla devices because sub-expressions such as products in fplas can be common to multiple outputs and much scope for reducing the amount of intermediate logic is lost if not done. These common sub-expressions are *very* common in state machines.) 4. Do any packages handle the partitioning into multiple devices at all well ? 5. What packages run on unix ? (Making someone write minimisation software for DOS with only 640K of memory must be a cruel and unusual punishment. It really needs to have access to multiple megs via virtual memory.) As somebody said, give us a simple batch interface, I already know how to run a text editor. -- Scott Colwell Labtam Information Systems P/L net: scott@labtam.oz.au Melbourne, Australia phone: +61-3-587-1444