TheAdvanced Boolean Expression Language (ABEL) is an obsoletehardware description language (HDL) and an associated set of design tools for programmingprogrammable logic devices (PLDs). It was created in 1983 byData I/O Corporation, in Redmond, Washington.
ABEL includes both concurrent equation and truth table logic formats as well as a sequential state machine description format. A preprocessor with syntax loosely based onDigital Equipment Corporation'sMACRO-11assembly language is also included.
In addition to being used for describingdigital logic, ABEL may also be used to describe test vectors (patterns of inputs and expected outputs) that may be downloaded to a hardware PLD programmer along with the compiled and fuse-mapped PLD programming data.
Other PLD design languages originating in the same era includeCUPL andPALASM. Since the advent of largerfield-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), PLD-specific HDLs have fallen out of favor as standard HDLs such asVerilog andVHDL gained adoption.
The ABEL concept and original compiler were created by Russell de Pina of Data I/O's Applied Research Group in 1981. The work was continued by ABEL product development team (led by Dr. Kyu Y. Lee) and included Mary Bailey, Bjorn Benson,Walter Bright, Michael Holley, Charles Olivier, and David Pellerin.[1]
After a series of acquisitions, the ABEL toolchain and intellectual property were bought byXilinx.[2] Xilinx discontinued support for ABEL in itsISE Design Suite starting with version 11 (released in 2010).[3]
Xilinx Inc. intends to acquire some of Minc's assets from MI Acquisition, including the popular Abel tool and language,
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