Presentation about the journey towards creating generated graphical views and a Graphics Configuration DSL. Tells the story from digital design by hand, up to graphical editors, textual editors and graphically assisted textual editors.

1. redefine.digital.design: Helping you deal with complexity in VHDL and Verilog.
EclipseCon Europe, Ludwigsburg
Taming complex chip designs with
beautiful diagrams
Titouan Vervack
2017-10-24

2. Ghent
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3. Sigasi
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4. What do we do?
Eclipse-based VHDL & SystemVerilog IDE
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5. Chip design
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6. Chip design
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7. Hardware Description Language (HDL)
entity and_or_top is
Port(
A : in bit; -- NAND gate input
B : in bit; -- NAND gate input
Q : out bit -- NAND gate output
);
end and_or_top;
architecture Behavioral of and_or_top is
begin
Q <= A nand B; -- 2 input NAND gate
end Behavioral;
● VHDL
● (System)Verilog
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8. Graphical editors with HDL
HDL code
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9. Graphical editors with HDL
Graphical HDL code
Generate
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10. Graphical editors with HDL
Graphical HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Generate Compile
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11. Graphical editors with HDL
Graphical HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Generate Compile
7

12. Graphical editors with HDL
8

13. Graphical editors with HDL
9

14. Generate
Graphical editors with HDL
Graphical HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Compile
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15. Graphical editors with HDL
Graphical HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Generate Compile
?
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16. Our view
Graphical view HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Generate Compile
Navigate
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17. Graphical <-> source interaction
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18. Graphical <-> source interaction
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19. Graphical <-> source interaction
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20. Graphical <-> source interaction
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21. Graphical <-> source interaction
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22. Text-based design with graphical views
ELK (Eclipse Layout Kernel) KlighD
(Kieler Light Weight Diagrams)
Graphviz DOT GEF & Zest
14

23. Text-based design with graphical views
Perfect solution?
● Cluttered
● Too much detail (e.g. 20MB SVG file)
● No focus
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24. Text-based design with graphical views
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25. Text-based design with graphical views
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26. UI configuration
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27. Goals:
● Filtering
● Simplify collaboration
● Serializable
● Mergable
● Reproducible
● Ability to highlight important parts
Text-based design with graphical views
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28. Our updated view
HDL code
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29. Our updated view
HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Compile
Navigate
20

30. Our updated view
Graphical
HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Compile
Navigate
Generate
Navigate
20

31. Our updated view
Graphical
HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Compile
Navigate
Generate
Navigate
DSL 20

32. Our updated view
Graphical
HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Compile
Navigate
Generate
Navigate
DSL 20

33. Our updated view
Graphical
HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Compile
Navigate
Generate
Navigate
DSL
Navigate
Compile
20

34. Our updated view
Graphical
HDL code
Warnings &
Errors
Compile
Navigate
Generate
Navigate
DSL
Generate
Navigate
Navigate
Compile
20

35. Separate file:
● Does not taint the original source code
● Multiple views for one source
○ Clocking/reset structure
○ Data flow
● Can be generated (group all wires between blocks)
DSL
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36. DEMO
Demo
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37. ● DSL is fully covered
● UI: assume framework works
● SVG export: font size differences are a challenge
Testing
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38. ● DSL is fully covered
● UI: assume framework works
● SVG export: font size differences are a challenge
Testing
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39. ● DSL is fully covered
● UI: assume framework works
● SVG export: font size differences are a challenge
Testing
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40. ● Use graphical views, not graphical editors
● One on one projection is often not what you want
● ELK + Xtext + Eclipse
Conclusion
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41. Evaluate the Sessions
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