[myhdl-list] Performance Solution #3, Getting Silicon Valley behind it, Class, LGPL, Video

[Christopher L. <loz...@fr...>]

*Performance Solution #3*

For my entire life people have criticized object-oriented software as 
too slow.  They want to prematurely optimize all the function calls, 
rather than work at the level of optimizing the application.

My standard answer is give me the fastest development environment 
possible to bring up my application.  Once that is done, I can find out 
what is really slow, and what can be done about it.  Then I can optimize 
that small part that is slow.  In 30 years of practice I have never 
needed to actually do that!

In my design, the slowest part will be my hugely complicated 
communication channels.  In python, I can simplify that with a 
simplified model that anything can talk to anything.  I can have two 
versions of the communication channels.  One that simulates the details, 
and another one that does the exact same thing at a higher level of 
abstraction but runs much faster.   In this case, I may need to do this.

And since this is python, it will take me very little time to build both 
models.  If I am really lucky the two models will be perfectly 
interchangeable, and provide an additional test harness, but even if 
they are not, I will be fine.

*Getting Silicon Valley Behind it. *

Jan made an excellent comment about the need to get Silicon Valley 
behind this.  I had been expecting to have very interesting 
conversations with the hardware and tool vendors.   If anybody has an 
insight into how those conversations would go, I would be very 
interested in hearing it.  Here is my naive suggestion.

Let us have a bunch of people behind the scenes with different 
responsibilities.  Create a sense of structure.  One person in charge of 
interfacing with 3rd party tools.  One person in charge of class 
libraries, specifically libraries to support custom hardware features.  
For example someone mentioned that some FPGA's now have FIFO hardware 
modules.  So we need FIFO software modules.  Maybe another person 
responsible for open source ip cores.    And maybe a third person in 
charge of conferences.   And a fourth person in charge of offering a 
class.  Ideally,  those individuals would ideally be available by cell 
phone during the conference.  That would totally destroy the one-man 
image.  It is what is missing from managed by mailing list.

Any volunteers?

*Class*

Which brings us to the Class.

Thank you very much for the class docs Christopher Felton.  Forgive me 
if I take a different path.  Jan Coombs and I are putting together a 
simple blink the lights class.  Anyone else who wants to work with us, 
we would be delighted to have you participate.  More on this later.

*LGPL*

It would be great if you could add the common sense description to the 
front of the LGPG.

"Our intent is that you can you own the designs, and test harnesses, but 
changes you make to the core MyHDL world get shared.  "

Of course LGPL does not allow for edits.  Which is a pity, because the 
license should refer to the application domain in order to be clearer.

Anyhow I am pleased that this mailing list has come to life.   I have 
had a great time this last week, and learned a lot.

-- 
Regards
Christopher Lozinski

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