Handshaking in Kansas lava using patch logic

Abstract

Designing hardware is like writing music for an orchestra - lots of pieces have to come together at the correct time for everything to work. In systems design, there is a confusing array of standards for allowing cooperating components, and little type-level support in traditional design methodologies for helping connect components with pre-arranged protocols. In this paper, we explore bringing protocol-level types to communicating processes. Inside our hardware description language Kansas Lava we introduce the notation of a patch, which is a communicating component with well-understood protocols. We build a theory round the notion of patches, which we call patch logic, and then use the patch abstraction to build a small driver for an FPGA board. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.