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I have seen the term Register Transfer Language being used as the expansion of RTL in the context of Hardware Description Languages (HDLs). Specifically over here: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1011/SysOnChip/socdam-notes1011.pdf (Lecture notes on System On Chip Design and modelling by the University of Cambridge). Also see these slides by Princeton University : Lecture 15: Register Transfer Language and Verilog

At my university, I have been taught that RTL is a design abstraction which stands for Register Transfer Level and is used to denote a level for describing digital systems at the behavioral level as transfers between registers.

I have also heard about Register Transfer Language as an Intermediate Representation (IR) used by compilers such as GCC.

See https://llvm.org/pubs/2010-06-06-Clang-LLVM.pdf

The RTL is an assembler language for an imaginary processor architecture. It is passed on to the backend, which converts it into the machine code for the target architecture.

From a technical point of view, is the use of the term Register Transfer Language for HDLs correct?

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    \$\begingroup\$ There are high level behavioral uses of HDLs that are definitely not RTL.They simulate well and might even synthesize okay. But if you applied that term to them, you'd be chided. There are levels of description that fall squarely into RTL. At this level you are taking some control over synthesis by describing the hardware you want from synthesis using knowledge you have about how the HDL you write infers specific logic elements, such as flip-flops, latches and how data is transferred around between them. If you are doing that kind of thing, it's probably RTL. \$\endgroup\$
    – jonk
    Apr 29, 2021 at 17:32
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    \$\begingroup\$ You can use RTL when you are discussing RTL, I guess. And RTL is written in HDLs. So I guess I didn't follow the question and that probably means I'll leave it to someone else who can better follow. It could be I'm just not in the right circumstances at the moment and it has nothing to do with you, just me. So put the blame on me. \$\endgroup\$
    – jonk
    Apr 29, 2021 at 17:48
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    \$\begingroup\$ These terms and the acronym RTL are not standardized. Anyone can use them to mean whatever they want. \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2021 at 11:28
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    \$\begingroup\$ @ElliotAlderson I agree the terms are not standardised, but the purpose of the question is to get recommended best practices when using these terms. With the right use of terms, I believe confusion can be avoided. \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2021 at 12:05
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    \$\begingroup\$ ...especially when discussing languages and levels and software and hardware in the same document. \$\endgroup\$
    – tim
    Apr 30, 2021 at 12:07

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Before the advent of compilers and synthesis tools, a Register Transfer Language (RTL) was any notation used by processor and micro-architects that described the timing and transfer of data between inputs, registers, or memory. These descriptions were used as instructions to hardwire the first computers with jumper cables or switches.

This terminology was taken up by tools in the process of taking RTL source text and synthesizing it into either machine code for software compilers, or circuits for hardware.

At some point during the introduction of RTL synthesis tools, people wanted to distinguish between transistor-level, switch-level, gate-level, and RTL-level abstraction of descriptions, and they started switching the L word Language to Level (and sometimes even Logic).

Over the decades, RTL has come to mean any portion of a hardware description that is fed into a synthesis tool, regardless of any registers or gates in the source code. So you really have to know the context where RTL is being used as input to a tool, or a level of coding abstraction. We are stuck with dealing with it.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Thank you for giving historical context. I really appreciate this answer. \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2021 at 17:42
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RTL is a style of coding where clocked elements are expressly implied. This is generally done because synthesizers are not generally designed to design state machines on their own. While they often shine at logic optimization, they are not sophisticated enough to design all the synchronous timing from an abstract description.

HDLs such as VHDL and Verilog support RTL, but they aren't equivalent. Both languages also support behavioral descriptions, which are more abstract and allow efficient simulations of systems at more of a block diagram level to ensure the design is correct on a system level, and gate level descriptions, in which each individual element is instantiated explicitly. Gate level designs are often generated by synthesizers, but can be written directly.

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While previous answer doesn't directly answer the question, it provides a common understanding of how RTL should be read regarding digital design topics, at least according to my engineering and teaching experience.

Opposed to that, from slides at the first two links in your question, I got an impression of sloppily mixed concepts and terminology (note, that this is just my impression regarding only the "RTL" term usage in the slides). Moreover, this is the first time ever that I see "RTL" as abbreviation of "Register Transfer Language" and not "Register Transfer Level" in the context of digital design. The third link, which describes Register Transfer Language in the context of a processor architecture, seems to use it correctly, though.

I've dug a little through the history of publications of the first link's author to see if the author uses "RTL" in the same manner now. Here are examples of using "RTL" in a more recent publication, c. 2019:

Although there is no accepted taxonomy of high versus lowlevel languages for hardware design, we can roughly relate a gatelevel netlist to machine code, RTL to assembly language, ...

Programs in a ‘Hardware Construction Language’, such as Chisel, essentially ‘print out’ an RTL or structural design ...

Further instances use "RTL" in same the manner, i.e. as an abstraction level of a design, except one phrase, which may imply "Register Transfer Language":

The generate statements of Verilog and VHDL form the hardware construction languages of those RTLs.

Thus, despite not expanding "RTL", the author consistently uses it in a sense of "Register Transfer Level" and not "Register Transfer Language". This confirms my initial impression of terminology mixup in the slides.

So answering your question, I would say that the use of the term Register Transfer Language for HDLs is incorrect.

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  1. In the abstract of the IEEE Std 1800-2017 it is stated:

Abstract: The definition of the language syntax and semantics for SystemVerilog, which is a unified hardware design, specification, and verification language, is provided. This standard includes support for modeling hardware at the behavioral, register transfer level (RTL), and gate-level abstraction levels, and for writing testbenches using coverage, assertions, object-oriented programming, and constrained random verification. The standard also provides application programming interfaces (APIs) to foreign programming languages.

From this it is clear that RTL is an abbreviation for Register Transfer Level in the context of SystemVerilog.

  1. In the Appendix of the Accellera SystemC Synthesis Subset Language Reference Manual:

A.4.4.2

Implementation RT Level

Register Transfer Level (RTL), as the name suggests, describes functions and signals from registers to registers. The basic elements of this level are combinational and sequential functional/logic units, registers, and signals.

  1. I am not able to access the VHDL Manual so trusting this resource:

The VHDL language standards committee offers this definition for RTL: “The register transfer level of modeling circuits in VHDL for use with register transfer level synthesis. Register transfer level is a level of description of a digital design in which the clocked behavior of the design is expressly described in terms of data transfers between storage elements in sequential logic, which may be implied, and combinatorial logic, which may represent any computing or arithmetic-logic-unit logic. RTL modeling allows design hierarchy that represents a structural description of other RTL models.”

Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-075067866-7/50008-1


This resource I found also sheds light on this issue:

  1. To software developers, RTL may mean register transfer language. An example is the generation of an intermediate file format produced by a compiler such as gcc, during the translation of C code to machine language for a specific microprocessor.
  2. To microprocessor designers, RTL may be conceived as a pseudo-code description of an instruction set architecture, describing the dataflow between different elements of the processor.
  3. To FPGA designers, RTL stands for register transfer level, a relatively low level of abstraction allowing the description of a specific digital circuit. RTL can also be used to mean a hardware description language (VHDL, Verilog, SystemC), where “RTL” code is a lower level of abstraction than “Behavioral Level” code, although both are actually subsets of the full scope of HDL languages.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/register-transfer-level

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Does this address that "Register Transfer Language [is] being used as the expansion of RTL in the context of Hardware Description Languages (HDLs)" though? \$\endgroup\$
    – megasplash
    Apr 30, 2021 at 14:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ @megasplash it says RTL means different things for different people. It also mentions the VHDL committee's definition of RTL as "Register Transfer Level". \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2021 at 14:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ You can't say "I read that someone said that someone on a committee made a comment...". The question remains: is their an actual IEEE standards document that has a section named "Definitions" and in that section it says that the acronym "RTL" has one and only one meaning? As far as I can tell, the IEEE defines the term "register transfer level" but does not assume that the acronym RTL always means "register transfer level". \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2021 at 15:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ @ElliotAlderson See the edit in my answer. In the IEEE SystemVerilog standard, the expansion of RTL in the context of SystemVerilog is mentioned. \$\endgroup\$ Apr 30, 2021 at 15:40
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    \$\begingroup\$ Actually, he is looking at an example of a definition of an acronym in an IEEE standards document. \$\endgroup\$
    – tim
    Apr 30, 2021 at 23:01

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