Over the past decade there has been a dramatic change in the role played by design automation for electronic systems. Ten years ago, integrated circuit (IC) designers were content to use the computer for circuit, logic, and limited amounts of high-level simulation, as well as for capturing the digitized mask layouts used for IC manufacture. The tools were only aids to design-the designer could always find a way to implement the chip or board manually if the tools failed or if they did not give acceptable results. Today, however, design technology plays an indispensable role in the design ofelectronic systems and is critical to achieving time-to-market, cost, and performance targets. In less than ten years, designers have come to rely on automatic or semi automatic CAD systems for the physical design ofcomplex ICs containing over a million transistors. In the past three years, practical logic synthesis systems that take into account both cost and performance have become a commercial reality and many designers have already relinquished control ofthe logic netlist level of design to automatic computer aids. To date, only in certain well-defined areas, especially digital signal process ing and telecommunications. have higher-level design methods and tools found significant success. However, the forces of time-to-market and growing system complexity will demand the broad-based adoption of high-level, automated methods and tools over the next few years.

Over the past decade there has been a dramatic change in the role played by design automation for electronic systems. Ten years ago, integrated circuit (IC) designers were content to use the computer for circuit, logic, and limited amounts of high-level simulation, as well as for capturing the digitized mask layouts used for IC manufacture. The tools were only aids to design-the designer could always find a way to implement the chip or board manually if the tools failed or if they did not give acceptable results. Today, however, design technology plays an indispensable role in the design ofelectronic systems and is critical to achieving time-to-market, cost, and performance targets. In less than ten years, designers have come to rely on automatic or semi automatic CAD systems for the physical design ofcomplex ICs containing over a million transistors. In the past three years, practical logic synthesis systems that take into account both cost and performance have become a commercial reality and many designers have already relinquished control ofthe logic netlist level of design to automatic computer aids. To date, only in certain well-defined areas, especially digital signal process ing and telecommunications. have higher-level design methods and tools found significant success. However, the forces of time-to-market and growing system complexity will demand the broad-based adoption of high-level, automated methods and tools over the next few years.

This book presents an integrated approach to digital design principles, processes, and implementations to help the reader design increasingly complex systems within shorter design cycles. It also introduces digital design concepts, VHDL coding, VHDL simulation, synthesis commands, and strategies together. · VHDL and Digital Circuit Primitives· VHDL Simulation and Synthesis Environment and Design Process· Basic Combinational Circuits· Basic Binary Arithmetic Circuits· Basic Sequential Circuits· Registers· Clock and Reset Circuits· Dual-Port RAM, FIFO, and DRAM Modeling· A Design Case Study: Finite Impulse Response Filter ASIC Design· A Design Case Study: A Microprogram Controller Design· Error Detection and Correction· Fixed-Point Multiplication· Fixed-Point Division· Floating-Point Arithmetic

Electronic systems based on digital principles are becoming ubiquitous. A good design approach to these systems is essential and a top-down methodology is favoured. Such an approach is vastly simplified by the use of computer modeling to describe the systems. VHDL is a formal language which allows a designer to model the behaviours and structure of a digital circuit on a computer before implementation. "Digital System Design with VHDL" is intended both for students on Digital Design courses and practitioners who would like to integrate digital design and VHDL synthesis in the workplace. Its unique approach combines the principles of digital design with a guide to the use of VHDL. Synthesis issues are discussed and practical guidelines are provided for improving simulation accuracy and performance. Features: a practical perspective is obtained by the inclusion of real-life examples an emphasis on software engineering practices encourages clear coding and adequate documentation of the process demonstrates the effects of particular coding styles on synthesis and simulation efficiency covers the major VHDL standards includes an appendix with examples in Verilog

The purpose of this book is to introduce VHSIC Hardware Description Lan guage (VHDL) and its use for synthesis. VHDL is a hardware description language which provides a means of specifying a digital system over different levels of abstraction. It supports behavior specification during the early stages of a design process and structural specification during the later implementation stages. VHDL was originally introduced as a hardware description language that per mitted the simulation of digital designs. It is now increasingly used for design specifications that are given as the input to synthesis tools which translate the specifications into netlists from which the physical systems can be built. One problem with this use of VHDL is that not all of its constructs are useful in synthesis. The specification of delay in signal assignments does not have a clear meaning in synthesis, where delays have already been determined by the im plementationtechnolo~y. VHDL has data-structures such as files and pointers, useful for simulation purposes but not for actual synthesis. As a result synthe sis tools accept only subsets of VHDL. This book tries to cover the synthesis aspect of VHDL, while keeping the simulation-specifics to a minimum. This book is suitable for working professionals as well as for graduate or under graduate study. Readers can view this book as a way to get acquainted with VHDL and how it can be used in modeling of digital designs.

This book presents an excellent collection of contributions addressing different aspects of high-level synthesis from both industry and academia. It includes an overview of available EDA tool solutions and their applicability to design problems.

Rapid advances in microelectronic integration and the advent of Systems-on-Chip have fueled the need for high-level synthesis, i.e., an automated approach to the synthesis of hardware from behavioral descriptions. SPARK: A Parallelizing Approach to the High - Level Synthesis of Digital Circuits presents a novel approach to the high-level synthesis of digital circuits -- that of parallelizing high-level synthesis (PHLS). This approach uses aggressive code parallelizing and code motion techniques to discover circuit optimization opportunities beyond what is possible with traditional high-level synthesis. This PHLS approach addresses the problems of the poor quality of synthesis results and the lack of controllability over the transformations applied during the high-level synthesis of system descriptions with complex control flows, that is, with nested conditionals and loops. Also described are speculative code motion techniques and dynamic compiler transformations that optimize the circuit quality in terms of cycle time, circuit size and interconnect costs. We describe the SPARK parallelizing high-level synthesis framework in which we have implemented these techniques and demonstrate the utility of SPARK's PHLS approach using designs derived from multimedia and image processing applications. We also present a case study of an instruction length decoder derived from the Intel Pentium-class of microprocessors. This case study serves as an example of a typical microprocessor functional block with complex control flow and demonstrates how our techniques are useful for such designs. SPARK: A Parallelizing Approach to the High - Level Synthesis of Digital Circuits is targeted mainly to embedded system designers and researchers. This includes people working on design and design automation. The book is useful for researchers and design automation engineers who wish to understand how the main problems hindering the adoption of high-level synthesis among designers.