Hardware and software: The closing gap
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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