Rapid prototyping environment for the specification and automatic synthesis of controllers for interconnection routers

We consider the problem of rapidly prototyping policy-specific controllers for routers in interconnection networks. A routing controller obtains data (e.g. headers of messages) from functionality-specific components (e.g. routers, network/bus interfaces) extracts relevant information and sends data or control information to external components. Policy specific decisions regarding routing or backtracking are also implemented by the controller. We are developing CoDeL (controller description language) a hardware description language for designing sequential machines with special attention being paid to the data abstraction and data movement capabilities. The compiler produces synthesizable VHDL code which can be directly mapped to any given technology such as FPGA, ASIC etc.