Hardware description languages: voices from the Tower of Babel

The work

AuthorsG. Jack Lipovski
Editors
Typearticle
Year1977
Also known aslipovski2006hardware
Citekeylipovski1977hardware

Where it appeared

Published inComputer
Volume10
Issue6
Pages14--17

Identifiers

DOI10.1109/c-m.1977.217740

Related

Distinct fromboulton1990hol
Distinct fromcullyer1987application
Distinct fromgoossens1992embedding

Abstract

A hardware description language can be used to describe the logic gates, the sequential machines, and the functional modules, along with their interconnection and their control, in a digital system. In a general sense, Boolean equations, logic diagrams, programrning languages, and Petri nets are hardware description languages: they can be used to describe some aspect of hardware and they have definable syntax and semantics. Specifically, what is more commonly referred to as a hardware description language is a variation of a programming language tuned to the overall needs of describing hardware. This article will discuss the rationale for using such languages in the first place, identify the problems attendant upon their proliferation, and describe the measures being taken to achieve a solution.

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How it got here

How it got hereimport via bibtex
Added2026-08-04 00:00 UTC
Approved bya person 2026-09-23 14:11 UTC

Filed under

ieee-computer

Cite it as

@article{lipovski1977hardware,
  title        = {Hardware description languages: voices from the Tower of Babel},
  author       = {G. Jack Lipovski},
  year         = {1977},
  journal      = {Computer},
  volume       = {10},
  number       = {6},
  pages        = {14--17},
  doi          = {10.1109/c-m.1977.217740},
}

This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/lipovski1977hardware/ and will keep doing so. It used to be called lipovski2006hardware, and those addresses still resolve to this one.