VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) is a hardware description language used to describe digital and mixed-signal systems such as field-programmable gate arrays and integrated circuits. It allows the behavior of electronic circuits to be modeled and simulated before being synthesized into real hardware. VHDL is a general-purpose programming language that includes features for structured design and describing concurrent events, which is important for capturing the concurrent nature of hardware. Other hardware description languages include Verilog and System Verilog, with each having their own style and capabilities for register-transfer-level modeling, simulation, and verification of system on chip designs.
VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) is a hardware description language used to describe digital and mixed-signal systems such as field-programmable gate arrays and integrated circuits. It allows the behavior of electronic circuits to be modeled and simulated before being synthesized into real hardware. VHDL is a general-purpose programming language that includes features for structured design and describing concurrent events, which is important for capturing the concurrent nature of hardware. Other hardware description languages include Verilog and System Verilog, with each having their own style and capabilities for register-transfer-level modeling, simulation, and verification of system on chip designs.
VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) is a hardware description language used to describe digital and mixed-signal systems such as field-programmable gate arrays and integrated circuits. It allows the behavior of electronic circuits to be modeled and simulated before being synthesized into real hardware. VHDL is a general-purpose programming language that includes features for structured design and describing concurrent events, which is important for capturing the concurrent nature of hardware. Other hardware description languages include Verilog and System Verilog, with each having their own style and capabilities for register-transfer-level modeling, simulation, and verification of system on chip designs.
VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) is a hardware description language used to describe digital and mixed-signal systems such as field-programmable gate arrays and integrated circuits. It allows the behavior of electronic circuits to be modeled and simulated before being synthesized into real hardware. VHDL is a general-purpose programming language that includes features for structured design and describing concurrent events, which is important for capturing the concurrent nature of hardware. Other hardware description languages include Verilog and System Verilog, with each having their own style and capabilities for register-transfer-level modeling, simulation, and verification of system on chip designs.
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I.
VHDL A. What is VHDL? VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) is a hardware description language used in electronic design automation to describe digital and mixed-signal systems such as field-programmable gate arrays and integrated circuits. VHDL can also be used as a general purpose parallel programming language. VHDL is a programming language that has been designed and optimized for describing the behavior of digital systems. VHDL has many features appropriate for describing the behavior of electronic components ranging from simple logic gates to complete microprocessors and custom chips. Features of VHDL allow electrical aspects of circuit behavior (such as rise and fall times of signals, delays through gates, and functional operation) to be precisely described. The resulting VHDL simulation models can then be used as building blocks in larger circuits (using schematics, block diagrams or system-level VHDL descriptions) for the purpose of simulation. VHDL is also a generalpurpose programming language: just as high-level programming languages allow complex design concepts to be expressed as computer programs, VHDL allows the behavior of complex electronic circuits to be captured into a design system for automatic circuit synthesis or for system simulation. Like Pascal, C and C++, VHDL includes features useful for structured design techniques, and offers a rich set of control and data representation features. Unlike these other programming languages, VHDL provides features allowing concurrent events to be described. This is important because the hardware described using VHDL is inherently concurrent in its operation. One of the most important applications of VHDL is to capture the performance specification for a circuit, in the form of what is commonly referred to as a test bench. Test benches are VHDL descriptions of circuit stimuli and corresponding expected outputs that verify the behavior of a circuit over time. Test benches should be an integral part of any VHDL project and should be created in tandem with other descriptions of the circuit. B. Advantage of using VHDL The key advantage of VHDL, when used for systems design, is that it allows the behavior of the required system to be described (modeled) and verified (simulated) before synthesis tools translate the design into real hardware (gates and wires).
Another benefit is that VHDL allows the description of a concurrent
system. VHDL is a dataflow language, unlike procedural computing languages such as BASIC, C, and assembly code, which all run sequentially, one instruction at a time. A VHDL project is multipurpose. Being created once, a calculation block can be used in many other projects. However, many formational and functional block parameters can be tuned (capacity parameters, memory size, element base, block composition and interconnection structure). A VHDL project is portable. Being created for one element base, a computing device project can be ported on another element base, for example VLSI with various technologies. C. VHDL and Other HDL Designers of electronic hardware describe the behavior and structure of system and circuit designs using hardware description languages (HDLs) specialized programming languages commonly known as VHDL, Verilog, and System Verilog. They differ from software programming languages because they include a means of describing propagation time and signal strengths. These days, it would be impossible to design a complex system on a chip (SoC) for a mobile device or any other consumer electronics product without an HDL. Each of the three HDLs has its own distinct style. VHDL and Verilog implement register-transfer-level (RTL) abstractions. When they were first introduced in the late 1980s, they were considered breakthrough technologies because they enabled engineers to work at a higher level of abstraction with RTL simulators. Previously, engineers simulated their designs at the schematic or gate level. System Verilog was developed to provide an evolutionary path from VHDL and Verilog to support the complexities of SoC designs. Its a bit of a hybridthe language combines HDLs and a hardware verification language using extensions to Verilog, plus it takes an object-oriented programming approach. System Verilog includes capabilities for test bench development and assertion-based formal verification. Comparing VHDL, Verilog, System Verilog VHDL and Verilog are considered general-purpose digital design languages, while System Verilog represents an enhanced version of Verilog. Each has its own style and characteristics. VHDL has roots in the
Ada programming language in both concept and syntax, while Verilogs
roots can be tracked back to an early HDL called Hilo and the C programming language. With Verilog and VHDL, engineers can represent the desired functionality as a software program. Then the model is simulated to confirm the design will work as intended. Any problems can be corrected in the model, and simulation will verify the correction. VHDL is a rich and strongly typed language, deterministic and more verbose than Verilog. As a result, designs written in VHDL are considered self-documenting. Its syntax is non-C-like and engineers working in VHDL need to do extra coding to convert from one data type to another. VHDL often catches errors missed by Verilog. VHDL emphasizes unambiguous semantics and allows portability between tools. Sample VHDL Code
Verilog is weakly typed and more concise with efficient notation. It
is deterministic. All data types are predefined in Verilog and each has a bit-level representation. Syntax is C-like. Sample Verilog Code
System Verilog includes a set of extensions to the Verilog HDL to
help engineers design and verify larger and more complex designs. In fact, many industry watchers consider it the first Hardware Description and Verification Language (HDVL), because it combines VHDL and Verilog features with those of Hardware Verification Languages (HVLs) Vera and e, as well as C and C++. Its targeted at RTL coding, using constrained random techniques for assertion-based and coverage-driven verification. Sample System Verilog Code
Because of its structure, VDHL catches most errors early in the
design process. Verilog, on the other hand, enables engineers to quickly write models. System Verilog attempts to capture the best features of both, and includes features of HVLs to support test bench development and formal verification techniques. Conclusion The language war days are long over, as engineering teams worldwide effectively employ VHDL, Verilog and System Verilog for their system on a chip (SoC) design needs. This overview provides a glimpse at the differences between the three. In general, System Verilog can help
with both design and verification. Design tools from electronic-designautomation (EDA) companies can combine VHDL and Verilog to suit all types of engineering requirements.
