The implementation of a system description language and its semantic functions

Reference

C. van Reeuwijk, The implementation of a system description language and its semantic functions, Delft University press, September 1991, ISBN 90-6275-717-0.

Keywords

Circuit description, computer aided design, circuit synthesis, system semantics, semantic function, Glass, multiple semantics, electronic circuit, digital circuit, analog circuit

Summary

This thesis describes the design of a language to describe arbitrary systems, called Glass. An important feature of Glass is that it allows multiple interpretations of the system descriptions. For example, when digital circuits are described in Glass, it is possible to derive a program from this description to simulate the behaviour of a circuit, and for Glass descriptions of suitable analog circuits, it is possible to derive an input file for circuit simulation programs like Spice. Each of these interpretations is called a semantic function. Because of this feature, Glass is said to have multiple semantics.

Having multiple semantics is only useful if it is easy to define new semantic functions on Glass. Therefore, difficult parts of a semantic function, such as parsing and correctness checking, should be provided to the author of semantic functions, so that only the essence of the semantic function must be written. For this reason I have developed a program, called {\em Tm}, to generate the necessary code to communicate with these parsing and checking programs. Tm is able to generate code for a number of programming languages, providing more flexibility in the implementation of semantic functions. Tm is a general program; it has also been used to generate code for other programs, including Ampdes, see below.

I have also written a number of example semantic functions that use this support. The example semantic functions were designed to be used in a synthesis program for high-performance amplifiers that is being developed at the Electronics Research Laboratory. This program is called Ampdes. Ampdes itself is also described.

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Last modified Friday 23 February 2007 13:45:50 UT by Kees van Reeuwijk.