tucked away in a manual
much better RTLs
Could you elaborate on what you do?
> Have you got any concrete ideas and proposals?
My recommendation is: try to build something complex, or take something from open-source that is very complex and extend it (test it, verify it, improve performance, etc.). Notice the problems you encounter, and then try to solve those problems.
I could give you a laundry list of pain points myself (why do I have to pay money for lint, and why does lint still suck???), but I think the best research is done by people trying to solve problem X, but along the way ended up having to solve Y and Z just to get to X.
I think there is an interesting C. P. Snow-like Two Cultures thing at play between SW and HW people. I think the latter don't quite get the abstraction power of modern programming languages, they don't understand that syntax, types, modularity matter. They think PLs are something like C and C++: a mess that we simply accept and get on with life. The former really underestimate the extreme scale and complexities involved in processor design and verification. Never the twain shall meet?
laundry list of pain points