Embedding a hardware description language in a functional meta-programming language

Abstract

General purpose functional languages such as Haskell, have been widely used as host languages for the embedding of domain specific languages. In particular, various hardware description languages have been successfully embedded in Haskell and other functional languages. More recently, meta-programming languages have also started being used for the embedding of such languages, where the meta-language features allow us to access the structure of data objects in a shallow-style embedding, while retaining the characteristics of a deep-embedding. In this paper, we discuss the application of meta-functional languages for the embedding of a hardware description language, based on reFLect, a functional meta-language which provides an alternative approach for embedding a hardware description language by means of built-in reflection features. Through the use of code quotation and pattern matching, we use reFLect to build a framework through which we can access the structure of our circuits by means of reflection.