Hey all,

I have somewhat of a weird question. I am working on a conceptual
problem, toying around with some ideas on automated manufacturing,
kind of like apt-get but for physical projects (manufacturing
processes -- lathes, ingots, smelting, all of it). So to do this I
figure there'd be a set of instruments that you have, and these
instruments have some sort of defined functionality, physical routines
that you know they are capable of doing. For example, you know that
the arm can rotate 180 degrees from an axis, and that it can lift a
certain amount of weight. What I'm wondering about is the
generalizability aspects of this. It's very much like an ISA on a pic,
the whole 'instrument network' that you have up in your machine shop,
since all of the automated tools already have microcontrollers onboard
in the first place. And you can add/remove tools from the shop too, so
it's a reconfigurable instruction set architecture. So, how do the
compiler projects do it -- like gcc? Do they parse VHDL/Verilog files
and then generate compiler modifications to let gcc target that
platform? Are there ways to 'specify' the functionality that parts
(such as an ALU, or in my case, such as an arm or lathe) provide? And
would it be meaningful to try to generate both the ISAs and the
compiler at the same time as a possible solution?

Willing to clarify.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
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