[TUHS] Re: Circuit design tool mentioned in AT&T Unix promotion

[Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com>]

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FYI: The sources to CDL are in the TUHS archives.

On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 7:56 AM Douglas McIlroy <
douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> CDL was for designing wired circuit boards, not integrated circuits..
> It was used to design the Datakit switch, the Belle chess machine and
> other hardware.
>
> I suspect the cited IC-design tool was one that Steve Johnson created
> for use in a short course that Carver Mead taught at Bell Labs. I am
> not aware that it saw use outside of that course.
>
> Doug
>
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2023 at 12:37 AM Christian Dreier via TUHS
> <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> > Hello there,
> >
> > I recently watched an old Unix promotion video by AT&T on YouTube (AT&T
> > Archives: The UNIX Operating System: https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0) and
> > they mention a design tool for integrated circuits (apparently named
> > L-Gen or lgen; timestamped link: https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0?t=1284).
> >
> > Part of this software is a language implemented with YACC that appears
> > to describe the behavior of digital logic, like modern hardware
> > description languages, i.e. Verilog and VHDL.
> >
> > Does anyone have information about this, in particular:
> > - Documentation
> > - Which projects were realized with this?
> > - Source code, if possible
> >
> > I asked this question on retrocomputing.stackexchange.com (see
> > https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/q/26301/26615) but so far there
> > is no satisfying answer. A "Circuit Design Language" (CDL) is mentioned
> > and there is some good information about it but it has another syntax
> > (as shown in the video vs. the documentation about CDL) and apparently
> > another purpose (description of board wiring vs. logic behavior).
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Christian
>
-- 
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual

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