Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorI too go back a lot of years and feel that block diagrams are easier to visualize.
I just don't get why looking at a list of ports in a text file is a good way to comprehend how a design ties together. Maps technology allows me to find how to get to any place in the country Therefore it should be possible to scroll a large schematic. It is not necessary to draw lines to connect blocks on a bdf. Design hierarchies exist so it should be possible to zoom to any level as easily as scrolling to an HDL module, and when I get there a shaped symbol could instantaneously give some indication of the function rather than focusing to read always, positive/negative edge and port names that go back to still other modules and it goes on and on. Last time I looked there wasn't even a qualified naming system to make it easy to find fan in and fan out. I do think SOPC builder is great for what it does. I was around when the "Description" language was conceived because the government could not keep up with the volume of paper. Then some people who were not designers heard the term "Language" but didn't know the difference between "Description" and "Design" decided to force feed HDL to designers. That took a long time, but at least some seem to swallow it. Boolean Algebra is the way to describe logic, not a bunch of if/else/semicolons.
