Advanced Boolean Expression Language


The Advanced Boolean Expression Language is an obsolete hardware description language and an associated set of design tools for programming PLDs. It was created in 1983 by Data 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 on DEC's Macro-11 is also included.
In addition to being used for logic descriptions, ABEL may also be used to describe test vectors that may be downloaded to a hardware device programmer along with the compiled and fuse-mapped PLD programming data.
Other PLD design languages originating in the same era include CUPL and PALASM. Since the advent of larger Field Programmable Gate Arrays, PLD languages have fallen out of favor as standard Hardware Description Languages such as VHDL and Verilog have gained in popularity.
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 and included Mary Bailey, Bjorn Benson, Walter Bright, Michael Holley, Charles Olivier and David Pellerin.
After a series of acquisitions, the ABEL toolchain and IP were bought by Xilinx Inc. Xilinx discontinued support for ABEL in ISE design suite 11, released in 2010.