Attributes

ACT provides a mechanism to specify user-customizable attributes. These can be attached to both instances as well as production rules. Different ACT tools can use these attributes for a variety of purposes. The meaning of these attributes is not pre-specified in the ACT language; rather, the set of valid attributes is specified in the ACT configuration file, and these attributes can be queried by tools. Hence, the meaning of these attributes is determined by how they are used by tools. Existing tools make use of a number of attributes as discussed below.

Production rule attributes are specified in the following way:

...
prs {
   [attrib1=value1; attrib2=value2] a  & b -> c-
}
...

Production rule attributes are processed by netlist generation and simulation tools.

• Simulation attributes
• Netlist attributes

The list of production rule attributes recognized by ACT is user-customizable, and is described in the ACT configuration file.

The other category of attributes is the instance attribute. The list of these is also extensible and can be defined in ACT configuration files.

The syntax is:

bool a;
a @ [attrib1=value1; attrib2=value2];