The Advanced Boolean Expression Language (ABEL) is an obsolete

hardware description language In computer engineering, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure and behavior of electronic circuits, usually to design application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and to progra ...

(HDL) and an associated set of design tools for programming

programmable logic device A programmable logic device (PLD) is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Unlike digital logic constructed using discrete logic gates with fixed functions, the function of a PLD is undefined at the time of m ...

s (PLDs). It was created in 1983 by Data I/O Corporation, in Redmond, Washington. ABEL includes both concurrent equation and truth table logic formats as well as a sequential state machine description format. A preprocessor with syntax loosely based on

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...

MACRO-11 MACRO-11 is an assembly language with macro facilities, designed for PDP-11 minicomputer family from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). It is the successor to Program Assembler Loader (PAL-11R), an earlier version of the PDP-11 assembly language ...

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

is also included. In addition to being used for describing

digital logic A logic gate is a device that performs a Boolean function, a logical operation performed on one or more binary inputs that produces a single binary output. Depending on the context, the term may refer to an ideal logic gate, one that has, for ...

, ABEL may also be used to describe test vectors (patterns of inputs and expected outputs) that may be downloaded to a hardware PLD programmer along with the compiled and fuse-mapped PLD programming data. Other PLD design languages originating in the same era include CUPL and PALASM. Since the advent of larger field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), PLD-specific HDLs have fallen out of favor as standard HDLs such as

Verilog Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits, with the highest level of abstraction being at the re ...

and

VHDL VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Program, VHSIC Hardware Description Language) is a hardware description language that can model the behavior and structure of Digital electronics, digital systems at multiple levels of abstraction, ran ...

gained adoption. The ABEL concept and original compiler were created by Russell de Pina of Data I/O's Applied Research Group in 1981. The work was continued by ABEL product development team (led by Dr. Kyu Y. Lee) and included Mary Bailey, Bjorn Benson,

Walter Bright Walter G. Bright (born March 10, 1959) is an American computer programmer who created the D programming language, the Zortech C++ compiler, and the ''Empire'' computer game. Early life and education Bright is the son of the United States Air F ...

, Michael Holley, Charles Olivier, and David Pellerin. After a series of acquisitions, the ABEL toolchain and intellectual property were bought by

Xilinx Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company is renowned for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA). It also pioneered ...

. Xilinx discontinued support for ABEL in its ISE Design Suite starting with version 11 (released in 2010).

References

External links

* University of Pennsylvania'
''ABEL primer''
as recommended by

. ''Dead Link'' * University of Southern Main
''ABEL-HDL Primer''
by J. Van der Spiegel * Prentice Hall Publisher
''Digital Design Using ABEL''
1994, by David Pellerin and Michael Holley * Prentice Hall Publisher
''Practical Design Using Programmable Logic''
1991, by David Pellerin and Michael Holley {{Authority control Hardware description languages