[kepler-dev] FYI: Dataflow Exchange Language

[Bertram Ludaescher]

FYI: 
I think a language like the following would be suitable for some of
our static WF analysis tools (yet to be developed ;-), including
semantic type analysis, QPN optimization, and others.

Best of all: I think the language has "0-cost" implementation by means 
of a Prolog operator precedence grammar, i.e., a bunch of ':- op(...)'
declarations will do and we have a parser. 

The language is thus human and machine readable and symbolic analysis
methods are easily implemented in Prolog..

DIF: An Interchange Format for Dataflow-based Design Tools 
Chia-Jui Hsu, Fuat Keceli, Ming-Yung Ko, Shahrooz Shahparnia, and
Shuvra S. Bhattacharyya


	http://www.ece.umd.edu/DSPCAD/papers/hsu2004x1.pdf

Abstract. The dataflow interchange format (DIF) is a textual language
that is geared towards capturing the semantics of graphical design
tools for DSP system design. A key objective of DIF is to facilitate
technology transfer across dataflow- based DSP design tools by
providing a common, extensible semantics for representing coarse-grain
dataflow graphs, and recognizing useful sub-classes of dataflow
models. DIF captures essential modeling information that is required
in dataflow-based analysis and optimization techniques, such as
algorithms for consistency analysis, scheduling, memory management,
and block processing, while optionally hiding proprietary details such
as the actual code that implements the dataflow blocks. Accompanying
DIF is a software package of intermediate representations and
algorithms that operate on application models that are captured
through DIF. This paper describes the structure of the DIF language
together with several implementation and usage examples.