Hi,
I'm wondering whats the standard/most prevelant way to create RAL files is. Do you create it and maintain it by hand or do you have any in-house/commercial tools?

In full disclosure, we have recently created a new tool for creating RAL files right from the specification. I was wondering if anyone would like to try it out.

Regards,
Anupam.
http://idesignspec.com

I have seen users creating RALF files manually OR through some sought of scripts to convert XL information to RAL.
Since users prefer their own specification formats, it is difficult to have a generic script unless there is a standard format.

Please let me know more about the tool you have created from the specification and the specification format.

Anupam,
Please share with the community how we can get more information of your new tool.. Given, the widespread use of RAL at multiple sites, there would be a good amount of interest.
As of now there are a couple of offerings I am aware of.. 'ralgen' itself can parse register definitions in IPXACT1.4 and convert them to RALF syntax..
ParadiwgmWorks has it spec2Reg offering which "translate the Microsoft Word based register definitions to ' Register Abstraction Layer Format(RALF)'
http://www.paradigm-works.com/products/index.shtml
Besides this, lot of folks have their own scripts to convert from XML/XLS to RALF..
Amit

Hi Sadiya, Amit,
I'm happy to talk about our tool.

Our tool, IDesignSpec (IDS), takes a register specification from a document. From the specification we can automatically generate RALF and other formats such as C/C++ headers, IP-XACT, Verilog, VHDL etc. Default outputs can be customized or new outputs can be created using TCL and/or XSLT.

As an example, you can write a Word document, and use TCL scripts to create custom outputs. That's very powerful.

We choose a document as the interface because normally such register information is already in a functional/architecture specification document. We support all popular editors (Word, OpenOffice, FrameMaker, StarOffice).

The tool supports hierarchy, multi-dimensional registers, memories, enums, constraints, even backdoor access and coverage. You can generate the outputs from inside the editor and get errors right there, in the editor itself. This saves you time. You can import IP-XACT as well. On Linux/Solaris, you can run it in Batch mode. So its not just a translator, it transforms your editor into an EDA tool!

For tool evaluations and more details contact : support@agnisys.com .

Regards,
Anupam

P.S. I didn't realize that ralgen can parse IP-XACT 1.4. That's good to know. Which version of ralgen is that supported?

Anupam,
Sounds greats..
As far as the ipxact support is concerned, Its part of the current OpenSource release.
You need to use ralgen -ipxact2ralf for the same..
Thanks
Amit