Yes, RTL level of abstraction is a way too low, even for most of the ASIC things. Yes, we need higher level HDLs (more abstract than the said Chisel and Bluespec). I'm working on it, stay tuned.
But what I cannot get from this article is what is exactly wrong with the current FPGAs design? They've got DSP slices (i.e., ALU macros), they've got block RAMs and all the routing facilities one can imagine. For the dataflow stuff it's more than enough.
Of course it would have been much better if the vendors published the detailed datasheets for all the available cells and the interconnect, for the bitfile formats, etc. - to make it possible for the alternative, open source toolchains to appear. Yes, their existing toolchains are, well, clumsy. But it is still quite possible to abstract away from the peculiarities of these toolchains.
Best of luck for your project. I'm curious about it and i'll wait.Instead i'll ask: what are your opinion regarding embedded/mcu software tools? do you see something better than rust that can automate the dev process ?
Thanks. I've been a Forth fan, but recently, looking at the advances in the static code analysis, I'd suspect that the higher level languages have a chance to become very useful in the mcu limited resources environment too. Rust is a nice attempt, and there is also a possibility that something doing a proper region analysis can kick in (looking at languages like Harlan, I would not say it's impossible).
But what I cannot get from this article is what is exactly wrong with the current FPGAs design? They've got DSP slices (i.e., ALU macros), they've got block RAMs and all the routing facilities one can imagine. For the dataflow stuff it's more than enough.
Of course it would have been much better if the vendors published the detailed datasheets for all the available cells and the interconnect, for the bitfile formats, etc. - to make it possible for the alternative, open source toolchains to appear. Yes, their existing toolchains are, well, clumsy. But it is still quite possible to abstract away from the peculiarities of these toolchains.