Atom (programming language): Difference between revisions

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Originally intended as a [[high-level programming language|high-level]] [[hardware description language]] (HDL), Atom was created in early 2007 and released as [[free and open-source software]] (FOSS) of April of that year.<ref>{{Cite report |url=http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2007-April/024090.html |title=ANN: Atom: Yet another Haskell HDL}}</ref> Inspired by TRS<ref name="hoe1">{{Cite conference |last1=Hoe |first1=James C. |author2=Arvind |author2-link=Arvind (computer scientist) |date=November 2000 |url=http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~jhoe/distribution/2000/iccad00.pdf |title=Synthesis of Operation-Centric Hardware Descriptions |conference=International Conference on Computer Aided Design (ICCAD)}}</ref> and [[Bluespec]], Atom [[Compiler|compiled]] circuit descriptions, that were based on guarded [[Linearizability|atomic operations]], or conditional term [[rewriting]], into [[Verilog]] [[netlist]]s for simulation and [[logic synthesis]]. As a hardware compiler, Atom's main objective is to maximize the number of operations, or rules, that can execute in a given [[Clock signal#Digital circuits|clock cycle]] without violating the semantics of atomic operation. By employing the properties of conflict-free and sequentially composable rules,<ref name="hoe1"/> Atom reduced maximizing execution [[Concurrency (computer science)|concurrency]] to a [[feedback arc set]] optimization of a rule-data dependency graph. This process was similar to [[James Hoe]]'s original algorithm.<ref name="hoe1"/>

When Atom's author switched careers in late 2007, from logic design to [[Embedded systems|embedded software]] engineering, Atom was redesigned from an HDL to a [[___domain -specific language]] targeting [[Realtime computing|hard realtime]] embedded applications. As a result, Atom's compiler's main objective changed from maximizing rule concurrency to balancing processing load and minimizing [[Worst case execution time|worst case timing latency]]. In September 2008, Atom was presented at the Commercial Users of Functional Programming (CUFP) conference.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://cufp.galois.com/2008/schedule.html |title=Controlling Hybrid Vehicles with Haskell |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080704175648/http://cufp.galois.com/2008/schedule.html |archive-date=2008-07-04 |access-date=2009-12-05}}</ref> In April 2009, in its new form, it was released as FOSS.<ref>[http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2009-April/060602.html ANN: atom-0.0.2]</ref>

== Overview ==