On 05/05/2011 12:22, V G wrote:
> You could say the same for C. The whole point is to hide the low level
> stuff generated by the compiler. All I'm saying is, personally, I need
> to know what's being hidden so I can truly understand what's going on.

no you don't. Even on C on any CPU big enough to have a "mainstream" OS,=20
99% of expertise is not even knowing C syntax, but C libraries. Unless=20
you are writing a device driver you don't want to know how it's=20
implemented. Even then what you "need to know" of what is "hidden" by=20
compiler is very little.

You need to learn what you are doing.  Herbert appears to be expert on=20
this stuff.

What is your Goal?
Unless you are doing designs at limit of the capacity of speed/"gate=20
utilisation" you don't need to know what is inside unless you are=20
designing FPGA.
Even if you are going to only do Verilog you should spend 2 days to  a=20
week looking at VHDL.
Unless you have specific goals or project that needs FPGA you will find=20
it hard to keep up momentum and focus on the real issues to learn.

I have done even device driver stuff on ARM and x86 Linux. ARM is RISC=20
and could be SoC almost all the I/O of a laptop with maybe less than=20
200,000 transistor core. Intel x86 might use ten chips or more for same=20
I/O and separate CISC CPU with over Billion transistors (x50 more). The=20
same C device driver code compiles for both for the PCMCIA modem.

If you doing "real time" timing on CPU in software, you may look inside=20
the x86 when it doesn't work, decide it's a horror and make a plug in=20
USB dongle that uses an 18F  PIC instead :)



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