Welcome to the Forum on Design Languages 1998 (FDL '98)

The Forum on Design Languages (FDL) is a new Forum to exchange experiences and to learn on new efforts and trends in the application of languages and formats and their associated design methods and tools in electronic design.

This first occurrence of the FDL Forum gathers three events under the same roof, namely the VHDL Users' Forum in Europe (VUFE), The Workshop on Virtual Component Modeling (VCM) and the Workshop on System-Level Design Language (SLDL). VUFE is the European VHDL User's Group Conference on HDL-related topics and standardization efforts. It was originally founded at the IFIP VLSI'89 Conference in Munich by IFIP WG 10.2/10.5. VCM, formerly known as the Workshop on Libraries, Component Modeling, and Quality Assurance, started in 1995. It is the European event on all aspects related to the development and the use of virtual components in electronic design. SLDL started in 1996 to address the need to develop general industry-wide consensus on the key problems facing the design of electronic systems.

As you will notice from the FDL structure, the Technical Program carefully integrates VUFE and VCM topics while maintaining the SLDL Workshop as a separate part. This is deliberate as the latter event has a different organization, although the topics it is covering have some tight links with the ones addressed in the other part, namely:
  • The practical and effective use of the VHDL hardware description language in the areas of system design, design validation and test, design synthesis, and component modeling.
  • The VHDL international standardization process, including insights in the future of hardware description languages.
  • The practical and effective use of design reuse, including component modeling aspects, and reports on industrial experience and on the ongoing work in the VSIA effort.

In addition, high-quality half-day tutorials are provided on Sunday, September 6. They cover advanced topics in the VHDL usage including RTL, object-oriented and system-level coding techniques, as well as very interesting new approach to design embedded systems.

Forum attendees will be also able to attend half-day practical hands-on labs on Unix workstations during the week in parallel with technical sessions. The tools used in these labs will address high-level design description.

FDL will take place in September in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. EPFL is situated in the french speaking part of Switzerland, on the shores of the Lake Léman (also known as the Lake of Geneva), the largest of Europe's freshwater lakes. It is also located close to swiss and french Alps, hence offering a variety of sites within relatively short distances. A special social event on Wednesday, September 9 in the evening will offer the opportunity to discover the region through a boat ride on the Lake Léman followed by a dinner in a castle.

Don't miss the opportunity to attend this new exciting event. I look forward to seeing you in Lausanne.

Alain Vachoux
FDL General Chair