NGHDL

  The following general requirements on NGHDL were identified:

• It should have a clean declarative kernel.
• The language itself (as well as its semantic definition) should have a modular structure. This means that the kernel is extended by a number of layers each of which is defined in terms of the next inner one. This scheme has profitably and successfully been applied to the language CIP-L.
• The semantics and the type system should be as simple as possible.
• The language should support several levels of abstraction.
• It must comprise constructs for large-scale parameterisation, instantiation and interface descriptions.
• There have to be constructs for expressing non-functional aspects (resource bounds).
• A way of specifying the allocation of computation both in space and time must be included.

With respect to parameterisation, an interesting area to pursue is viewing finite circuits as approximations of an idealizing infinite one.

Moreover, the following special concepts will be important:

• streams;
• states/statecharts;
• imperative features.

As a challenge to the foundations subgroup, a good but (efficiently!) decidable type system has to be found.