Abstract
The study of computing science is split at an early stage between the branches dealing separately with hardware and software; and there is a corresponding split in later professional specialisation. This paper explores the essential unity and overlap of the two branches. The basic concepts are those of occam, taken as a simple example of a high-level programming language; its notations may be translated by the laws of programming to the machine code of a conventional machine. Almost identical transformations can produce the networks of gates and flip-flops which constitute a hardware design. These insights are being exploited in hybrid systems, implemented partly in hardware and partly in software. A TRAM-standard printed circuit board called HARP has been constructed for such applications. It links a transputer by shared memory with a commercial Field Programmable Gate Array. Prospects for application are discussed.
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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Hoare, C.A.R., Page, I. (1994). Hardware and software: The closing gap. In: Gutknecht, J. (eds) Programming Languages and System Architectures. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 782. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57840-4_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-57840-4_24
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