I want Chisel to succeed so badly. I'm so sick and tired of writing VHDL. Verilog is no better.
Also it looks like LLHD is perhaps analogous to LLVM in that they offer an intermediate representation instead of providing a language that you code in yourself. Chisel also offers this via FIRRTL [1]. I can't decide whether to be excited about the fact that there are multiple ideas in this space or frustrated that these disparate teams aren't simply collaborating.
When two technology vectors merge, it is really nice when the product is simpler and purer rather than the simple union of the two becoming a Simpson's-esque swiss army knife.
It can be dangerous when two similar ideas are too close, for whatever reason they formed to begin with will continue to hold and now you have competing factions along with the problem you are trying to solve. Everyone has to agree before you can start using regexps in your codebase. Oddly specific but true.
I am going to say hold your papers, but this problem is not going to be solved just yet, but in two or three iterations, it will be amazing. It won't just be a hardware description language, that is much too narrow, and it will arrived at in a kind of Erlang way, discovered through necessity, not from a formal system. But who knows?!
I do think that folks should adopt some sort of language above VHDL/Verilog.
There is a lot of resistance to dropping Verilog among working processor designers in my experience. Interestingly, LLHD is being folded into CIRCT [1] which is part of LLVM.
I am trying to come to grips with this, this looks like this sets up the condition where the whole language compiler stack can change the target architecture and implementation.
This feels like some powerful algebraic property has been satisfied.
Also it looks like LLHD is perhaps analogous to LLVM in that they offer an intermediate representation instead of providing a language that you code in yourself. Chisel also offers this via FIRRTL [1]. I can't decide whether to be excited about the fact that there are multiple ideas in this space or frustrated that these disparate teams aren't simply collaborating.
[1]: https://github.com/chipsalliance/firrtl