X-Git-Url: https://git.stderr.nl/gitweb?p=matthijs%2Fmaster-project%2Freport.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=Chapters%2FNormalization.tex;h=61170088d4b13a23166d7a7683628629f7442351;hp=f9a10157970ad68d646a6d5948f697f516af8f23;hb=f276067e08b153e130b305242a4e2ef87e84960a;hpb=4b177f0eea59d8cc3e9da21a078583260d9f79c9 diff --git a/Chapters/Normalization.tex b/Chapters/Normalization.tex index f9a1015..6117008 100644 --- a/Chapters/Normalization.tex +++ b/Chapters/Normalization.tex @@ -2060,6 +2060,37 @@ transformations will probably need updating to handle them in all cases. + \subsection{Normalization of stateful descriptions} + Currently, the intended normal form definition\refdef{intended + normal form definition} offers enough freedom to describe all + valid stateful descriptions, but is not limiting enough. It is + possible to write descriptions which are in intended normal + form, but cannot be translated into \VHDL in a meaningful way + (\eg, a function that swaps two substates in its result, or a + function that changes a substate itself instead of passing it to + a subfunction). + + It is now up to the programmer to not do anything funny with + these state values, whereas the normalization just tries not to + mess up the flow of state values. In practice, there are + situations where a Core program that \emph{could} be a valid + stateful description is not translateable by the prototype. This + most often happens when statefulness is mixed with pattern + matching, causing a state input to be unpacked multiple times or + be unpacked and repacked only in some of the code paths. + + \todo{example?} + + Without going into detail about the exact problems (of which + there are probably more than have shown up so far), it seems + unlikely that these problems can be solved entirely by just + improving the \VHDL state generation in the final stage. The + normalization stage seems the best place to apply the rewriting + needed to support more complex stateful descriptions. This does + of course mean that the intended normal form definition must be + extended as well to be more specific about how state handling + should look like in normal form. + \section[sec:normalization:properties]{Provable properties} When looking at the system of transformations outlined above, there are a number of questions that we can ask ourselves. The main question is of course: @@ -2213,7 +2244,6 @@ Also, since there is only one node in the normal set, it must obviously be \emph{deterministic} as well. - \todo{Add content to these sections} \subsection{Termination} In general, proving termination of an arbitrary program is a very hard problem. \todo{Ref about arbitrary termination} Fortunately,