work was also the basis of KARL's interactive graphic sister language ABL, whose name was an initialism for "a block diagram language". ABL was implemented in the early 1980s by the Centro Studi e Laboratori Telecomunicazioni (CSELT) in Torino, Italy, producing the ABLED graphic VLSI design editor. In the mid-1980s, a VLSI design framework was implemented around KARL and ABL by an international consortium funded by the Commission of the European Union.

By the late 1970s,