\section{Hardware description in Haskell}
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+ To translate Haskell to hardware, every Haskell construct needs a
+ translation to \VHDL. There are often multiple valid translations
+ possible. When faced with choices, the most obvious choice has been
+ chosen wherever possible. In a lot of cases, when a programmer looks
+ at a functional hardware description it is completely clear what
+ hardware is described. We want our translator to generate exactly that
+ hardware whenever possible, to make working with Cλash as intuitive as
+ possible.
+
+ \subsection{Function application}
+ The basic syntactic elements of a functional program are functions
+ and function application. These have a single obvious \VHDL\
+ translation: each top level function becomes a hardware component,
+ where each argument is an input port and the result value is the
+ (single) output port. This output port can have a complex type (such
+ as a tuple), so having just a single output port does not pose a
+ limitation.
+
+ Each function application in turn becomes component instantiation.
+ Here, the result of each argument expression is assigned to a
+ signal, which is mapped to the corresponding input port. The output
+ port of the function is also mapped to a signal, which is used as
+ the result of the application.
+
+ Since every top level function generates its own component, the
+ hierarchy of of function calls is reflected in the final \VHDL\
+ output as well, creating a hierarchical \VHDL\ description of the
+ hardware. This separation in different components makes the
+ resulting \VHDL\ output easier to read and debug.
+
+ \subsection{Choice}
+ Although describing components and connections allows us to describe
+ a lot of hardware designs already, there is an obvious thing
+ missing: choice. We need some way to be able to choose between
+ values based on another value. In Haskell, choice is achieved by
+ \hs{case} expressions, \hs{if} expressions, pattern matching and
+ guards.
+
+ However, to be able to describe our hardware in a more convenient
+ way, we also want to translate Haskell's choice mechanisms. The
+ easiest of these are of course case expressions (and \hs{if}
+ expressions, which can be very directly translated to \hs{case}
+ expressions). A \hs{case} expression can in turn simply be
+ translated to a conditional assignment, where the conditions use
+ equality comparisons against the constructors in the \hs{case}
+ expressions.
+
+ A slightly more complex (but very powerful) form of choice is
+ pattern matching. A function can be defined in multiple clauses,
+ where each clause specifies a pattern. When the arguments match the
+ pattern, the corresponding clause will be used.
+
+ \subsection{Types}
+ Translation of two most basic functional concepts has been
+ discussed: function application and choice. Before looking further
+ into less obvious concepts like higher-order expressions and
+ polymorphism, the possible types that can be used in hardware
+ descriptions will be discussed.
+
+ Some way is needed to translate every values used to its hardware
+ equivalents. In particular, this means a hardware equivalent for
+ every \emph{type} used in a hardware description is needed
+
+ Since most functional languages have a lot of standard types that
+ are hard to translate (integers without a fixed size, lists without
+ a static length, etc.), a number of \quote{built-in} types will be
+ defined first. These types are built-in in the sense that our
+ compiler will have a fixed VHDL type for these. User defined types,
+ on the other hand, will have their hardware type derived directly
+ from their Haskell declaration automatically, according to the rules
+ sketched here.
+
+ \subsection{Built-in types}
+ The language currently supports the following built-in types. Of these,
+ only the \hs{Bool} type is supported by Haskell out of the box (the
+ others are defined by the Cλash package, so they are user-defined types
+ from Haskell's point of view).
+
+ \begin{description}
+ \item[\hs{Bit}]
+ This is the most basic type available. It is mapped directly onto
+ the \texttt{std\_logic} \VHDL\ type. Mapping this to the
+ \texttt{bit} type might make more sense (since the Haskell version
+ only has two values), but using \texttt{std\_logic} is more standard
+ (and allowed for some experimentation with don't care values)
+
+ \item[\hs{Bool}]
+ This is the only built-in Haskell type supported and is translated
+ exactly like the Bit type (where a value of \hs{True} corresponds to a
+ value of \hs{High}). Supporting the Bool type is particularly
+ useful to support \hs{if ... then ... else ...} expressions, which
+ always have a \hs{Bool} value for the condition.
+
+ A \hs{Bool} is translated to a \texttt{std\_logic}, just like \hs{Bit}.
+ \item[\hs{SizedWord}, \hs{SizedInt}]
+ These are types to represent integers. A \hs{SizedWord} is unsigned,
+ while a \hs{SizedInt} is signed. These types are parametrized by a
+ length type, so you can define an unsigned word of 32 bits wide as
+ ollows:
+
+ \begin{verbatim}
+ type Word32 = SizedWord D32
+ \end{verbatim}
+
+ Here, a type synonym \hs{Word32} is defined that is equal to the
+ \hs{SizedWord} type constructor applied to the type \hs{D32}. \hs{D32}
+ is the \emph{type level representation} of the decimal number 32,
+ making the \hs{Word32} type a 32-bit unsigned word.
+
+ These types are translated to the \small{VHDL} \texttt{unsigned} and
+ \texttt{signed} respectively.
+ \item[\hs{Vector}]
+ This is a vector type, that can contain elements of any other type and
+ has a fixed length. It has two type parameters: its
+ length and the type of the elements contained in it. By putting the
+ length parameter in the type, the length of a vector can be determined
+ at compile time, instead of only at run-time for conventional lists.
+
+ The \hs{Vector} type constructor takes two type arguments: the length
+ of the vector and the type of the elements contained in it. The state
+ type of an 8 element register bank would then for example be:
+
+ \begin{verbatim}
+ type RegisterState = Vector D8 Word32
+ \end{verbatim}
+
+ Here, a type synonym \hs{RegisterState} is defined that is equal to
+ the \hs{Vector} type constructor applied to the types \hs{D8} (The type
+ level representation of the decimal number 8) and \hs{Word32} (The 32
+ bit word type as defined above). In other words, the
+ \hs{RegisterState} type is a vector of 8 32-bit words.
+
+ A fixed size vector is translated to a \VHDL\ array type.
+ \item[\hs{RangedWord}]
+ This is another type to describe integers, but unlike the previous
+ two it has no specific bit-width, but an upper bound. This means that
+ its range is not limited to powers of two, but can be any number.
+ A \hs{RangedWord} only has an upper bound, its lower bound is
+ implicitly zero. There is a lot of added implementation complexity
+ when adding a lower bound and having just an upper bound was enough
+ for the primary purpose of this type: type-safely indexing vectors.
+
+ To define an index for the 8 element vector above, we would do:
+
+ \begin{verbatim}
+ type RegisterIndex = RangedWord D7
+ \end{verbatim}
+
+ Here, a type synonym \hs{RegisterIndex} is defined that is equal to
+ the \hs{RangedWord} type constructor applied to the type \hs{D7}. In
+ other words, this defines an unsigned word with values from
+ 0 to 7 (inclusive). This word can be be used to index the
+ 8 element vector \hs{RegisterState} above.
+
+ This type is translated to the \texttt{unsigned} \VHDL type.
+ \end{description}
+ \subsection{User-defined types}
+ There are three ways to define new types in Haskell: algebraic
+ data-types with the \hs{data} keyword, type synonyms with the \hs{type}
+ keyword and type renamings with the \hs{newtype} keyword. \GHC\
+ offers a few more advanced ways to introduce types (type families,
+ existential typing, \small{GADT}s, etc.) which are not standard
+ Haskell. These will be left outside the scope of this research.
+
+ Only an algebraic datatype declaration actually introduces a
+ completely new type, for which we provide the \VHDL\ translation
+ below. Type synonyms and renamings only define new names for
+ existing types (where synonyms are completely interchangeable and
+ renamings need explicit conversion). Therefore, these do not need
+ any particular \VHDL\ translation, a synonym or renamed type will
+ just use the same representation as the original type. The
+ distinction between a renaming and a synonym does no longer matter
+ in hardware and can be disregarded in the generated \VHDL.
+
+ For algebraic types, we can make the following distinction:
+
+ \begin{description}
+
+ \item[Product types]
+ A product type is an algebraic datatype with a single constructor with
+ two or more fields, denoted in practice like (a,b), (a,b,c), etc. This
+ is essentially a way to pack a few values together in a record-like
+ structure. In fact, the built-in tuple types are just algebraic product
+ types (and are thus supported in exactly the same way).
+
+ The ``product'' in its name refers to the collection of values belonging
+ to this type. The collection for a product type is the Cartesian
+ product of the collections for the types of its fields.
+
+ These types are translated to \VHDL\ record types, with one field for
+ every field in the constructor. This translation applies to all single
+ constructor algebraic data-types, including those with just one
+ field (which are technically not a product, but generate a VHDL
+ record for implementation simplicity).
+ \item[Enumerated types]
+ An enumerated type is an algebraic datatype with multiple constructors, but
+ none of them have fields. This is essentially a way to get an
+ enumeration-like type containing alternatives.
+
+ Note that Haskell's \hs{Bool} type is also defined as an
+ enumeration type, but we have a fixed translation for that.
+
+ These types are translated to \VHDL\ enumerations, with one value for
+ each constructor. This allows references to these constructors to be
+ translated to the corresponding enumeration value.
+ \item[Sum types]
+ A sum type is an algebraic datatype with multiple constructors, where
+ the constructors have one or more fields. Technically, a type with
+ more than one field per constructor is a sum of products type, but
+ for our purposes this distinction does not really make a
+ difference, so this distinction is note made.
+
+ The ``sum'' in its name refers again to the collection of values
+ belonging to this type. The collection for a sum type is the
+ union of the the collections for each of the constructors.
+
+ Sum types are currently not supported by the prototype, since there is
+ no obvious \VHDL\ alternative. They can easily be emulated, however, as
+ we will see from an example:
+
+ \begin{verbatim}
+ data Sum = A Bit Word | B Word
+ \end{verbatim}
+
+ An obvious way to translate this would be to create an enumeration to
+ distinguish the constructors and then create a big record that
+ contains all the fields of all the constructors. This is the same
+ translation that would result from the following enumeration and
+ product type (using a tuple for clarity):
+
+ \begin{verbatim}
+ data SumC = A | B
+ type Sum = (SumC, Bit, Word, Word)
+ \end{verbatim}
+
+ Here, the \hs{SumC} type effectively signals which of the latter three
+ fields of the \hs{Sum} type are valid (the first two if \hs{A}, the
+ last one if \hs{B}), all the other ones have no useful value.
+
+ An obvious problem with this naive approach is the space usage: the
+ example above generates a fairly big \VHDL\ type. Since we can be
+ sure that the two \hs{Word}s in the \hs{Sum} type will never be valid
+ at the same time, this is a waste of space.
+
+ Obviously, duplication detection could be used to reuse a
+ particular field for another constructor, but this would only
+ partially solve the problem. If two fields would be, for
+ example, an array of 8 bits and an 8 bit unsigned word, these are
+ different types and could not be shared. However, in the final
+ hardware, both of these types would simply be 8 bit connections,
+ so we have a 100\% size increase by not sharing these.
+ \end{description}
+
\section{Cλash prototype}
projects / matthijs / master-project / dsd-paper.git / commitdiff