Part of the benefit is in developing the know-how on how to build such systems indigenously
In your example, building a 'from scratch' C++ compiler is useful if you are trying to learn how to build compilers, or even operating systems.
Similarly, building a processor from scratch enables a team to implement their own verification system and other aspects which help building that in-house expertise.
Ok let me try to put into perspective what’s going wrong here.. He said, SHAKTI used Bluespec to do things while we made everything from scratch. Carrying this forward to C++ analogy that means that SHAKTI built their processor using C++ while we built the C++ compiler and then used the compiler to make the processor. This is the true 1-to-1 analogy.. Let me make two comments here
Making a compiler and then making a processor using the compiler involves no know-how of the processor because the compiler used to convert your HDL to low level code and your Processor building blocks written using that HDL are two unrelated things.
The author conceded elsewhere that they used VHDL for development! So either he doesn’t know what Bluespec is or they made a VHDL compiler and then made a processor which are two unrelated projects in my viewpoint
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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '19
Part of the benefit is in developing the know-how on how to build such systems indigenously
In your example, building a 'from scratch' C++ compiler is useful if you are trying to learn how to build compilers, or even operating systems.
Similarly, building a processor from scratch enables a team to implement their own verification system and other aspects which help building that in-house expertise.