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Ask HN: Why are we still using the same HDL languages from the 80s?
The main HDL languages today are Verilog and VHDL, and both have appeared from the 80s, it's 40 years ago, and we're still using them today !
My main question is why there is less evolution when it comes to HDL languages compared to programming languages ?
- PaulHoule 4y agoSize of the market vs difficulty of the problem. I wrote a FORTH interpreter in about 3000 lines of assembler when I was in high school. It's not hard to write a LISP and it's entirely routine to write a simple PASCAL-like language in a compiler class. The simple case I see is that if you completely understood the bitstream format of an FPGA it might not be hard to make something that compiles some kind of code to the FPGA. To compete with current HDL tools you would need something that produces photomasks, the cost of testing the system alone would be astronomical.
- pythops 4y agoThe size of the market was continuously growing from the 80s, we're producing more hardware with several architectures these days than before.
- PaulHoule 4y agoThere is size in terms of the dollar spend and then there is the number of people involved. These folks say current spend on EDA tools is a bit over $10 billion https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/electronic-design-automation-eda-tools-market https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/electron... This other report claims spend on software development tools is closer to $4B today. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/04/19/2424149/0/en/Software-Development-Tools-Market-Size-Booming-at-a-CAGR-of-14-5-During-2022-2027-Extensive-Research-by-Industry-Size-Recent-Developments-Market-Position-Growth-Drivers-Business-Op.html https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/04/19/242414... Frankly I don't know if those numbers are accurate but I am pretty sure there are many more people employed developing software than in developing microchips by a large margin. On the other hand, a lot of people develop software with no-cost tools such as GCC, Eclipse, Xcode, Visual Studio Code, ... My guess is that the software market is open to disruptive innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation but EDA isn't. I think there is a big market for programming languages that are strong in some areas but weak in others. For instance, Python is pretty slow compared to C, but that doesn't bother many users. Since Python has become so popular it has, over time, closed that gap with tools like numpy, numba, Cython, Pypy, etc. A company like Intel, on the other hand, is going to need high performance from their parts and the tools that make them. In principle they might like the idea of something that's built on a better foundation, but today they need all the features of the tools they have. There might be some customer that would benefit from new EDA tools with potential to grow in the future that could tolerate tools that aren't mature in every respect -- that's the opportunity for something new.
- thebiss 4y agoThere are others, as well as translators from higher level languages. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_description_language#Examples_of_HDLs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_description_language#...