VHDL-2008: Just the New Stuff, as its title says, introduces the new features added to the latest revision of the IEEE standard for the VHDL hardware description language. Written by the Chair and Technical Editor of the IEEE working group, the book is an authoritative guide to how the new features work and how to use them to improve design productivity. It will be invaluable for early adopters of the new language version, for tool implementers, and for those just curious about where VHDL is headed. * First in the market describing the new features of VHDL 2008;* Just the new features, so existing users and implementers can focus on what's new; * Helps readers to learn the new features soon, rather than waiting for new editions of complete VHDL reference books. * Authoritative, written by experts in the area; * Tutorial style, making it more accessible than the VHDL Standard Language Reference Manual.

A presentation of circuit synthesis and circuit simulation using VHDL (including VHDL 2008), with an emphasis on design examples and laboratory exercises. This text offers a comprehensive treatment of VHDL and its applications to the design and simulation of real, industry-standard circuits. It focuses on the use of VHDL rather than solely on the language, showing why and how certain types of circuits are inferred from the language constructs and how any of the four simulation categories can be implemented. It makes a rigorous distinction between VHDL for synthesis and VHDL for simulation. The VHDL codes in all design examples are complete, and circuit diagrams, physical synthesis in FPGAs, simulation results, and explanatory comments are included with the designs. The text reviews fundamental concepts of digital electronics and design and includes a series of appendixes that offer tutorials on important design tools including ISE, Quartus II, and ModelSim, as well as descriptions of programmable logic devices in which the designs are implemented, the DE2 development board, standard VHDL packages, and other features. All four VHDL editions (1987, 1993, 2002, and 2008) are covered. This expanded second edition is the first textbook on VHDL to include a detailed analysis of circuit simulation with VHDL testbenches in all four categories (nonautomated, fully automated, functional, and timing simulations), accompanied by complete practical examples. Chapters 1–9 have been updated, with new design examples and new details on such topics as data types and code statements. Chapter 10 is entirely new and deals exclusively with simulation. Chapters 11–17 are also entirely new, presenting extended and advanced designs with theoretical and practical coverage of serial data communications circuits, video circuits, and other topics. There are many more illustrations, and the exercises have been updated and their number more than doubled.

Provides students with a system-level perspective and the tools they need to understand, analyze and design complete digital systems using VHDL. It goes beyond the design of simple combinational and sequential modules to show how such modules are used to build complete systems, reflecting digital design in the real world.

A guide to applying software design principles and coding practices to VHDL to improve the readability, maintainability, and quality of VHDL code. This book addresses an often-neglected aspect of the creation of VHDL designs. A VHDL description is also source code, and VHDL designers can use the best practices of software development to write high-quality code and to organize it in a design. This book presents this unique set of skills, teaching VHDL designers of all experience levels how to apply the best design principles and coding practices from the software world to the world of hardware. The concepts introduced here will help readers write code that is easier to understand and more likely to be correct, with improved readability, maintainability, and overall quality. After a brief review of VHDL, the book presents fundamental design principles for writing code, discussing such topics as design, quality, architecture, modularity, abstraction, and hierarchy. Building on these concepts, the book then introduces and provides recommendations for each basic element of VHDL code, including statements, design units, types, data objects, and subprograms. The book covers naming data objects and functions, commenting the source code, and visually presenting the code on the screen. All recommendations are supported by detailed rationales. Finally, the book explores two uses of VHDL: synthesis and testbenches. It examines the key characteristics of code intended for synthesis (distinguishing it from code meant for simulation) and then demonstrates the design and implementation of testbenches with a series of examples that verify different kinds of models, including combinational, sequential, and FSM code. Examples from the book are also available on a companion website, enabling the reader to experiment with the complete source code.

Making VHDL a simple and easy-to-use hardware description language Many engineers encountering VHDL (very high speed integrated circuits hardware description language) for the first time can feel overwhelmed by it. This book bridges the gap between the VHDL language and the hardware that results from logic synthesis with clear organisation, progressing from the basics of combinational logic, types, and operators; through special structures such as tristate buses, register banks and memories, to advanced themes such as developing your own packages, writing test benches and using the full range of synthesis types. This third edition has been substantially rewritten to include the new VHDL-2008 features that enable synthesis of fixed-point and floating-point hardware. Extensively updated throughout to reflect modern logic synthesis usage, it also contains a complete case study to demonstrate the updated features. Features to this edition include: a common VHDL subset which will work across a range of different synthesis systems, targeting a very wide range of technologies a design style that results in long design lifetimes, maximum design reuse and easy technology retargeting a new chapter on a large scale design example based on a digital filter from design objective and design process, to testing strategy and test benches a chapter on writing test benches, with everything needed to implement a test-based design strategy extensive coverage of data path design, including integer, fixed-point and floating-point arithmetic, logic circuits, shifters, tristate buses, RAMs, ROMs, state machines, and decoders Focused specifically on logic synthesis, this book is for professional hardware engineers using VHDL for logic synthesis, and digital systems designers new to VHDL but familiar with digital systems. It offers all the knowledge and tools needed to use VHDL for logic synthesis. Organised in themed chapters and with a comprehensive index, this complete reference will also benefit postgraduate students following courses on microelectronics or VLSI/ semiconductors and digital design.

A completely updated and expanded comprehensive treatment of VHDL and its applications to the design and simulation of real, industry-standard circuits. This comprehensive treatment of VHDL and its applications to the design and simulation of real, industry-standard circuits has been completely updated and expanded for the third edition. New features include all VHDL-2008 constructs, an extensive review of digital circuits, RTL analysis, and an unequaled collection of VHDL examples and exercises. The book focuses on the use of VHDL rather than solely on the language, with an emphasis on design examples and laboratory exercises. The third edition begins with a detailed review of digital circuits (combinatorial, sequential, state machines, and FPGAs), thus providing a self-contained single reference for the teaching of digital circuit design with VHDL. In its coverage of VHDL-2008, it makes a clear distinction between VHDL for synthesis and VHDL for simulation. The text offers complete VHDL codes in examples as well as simulation results and comments. The significantly expanded examples and exercises include many not previously published, with multiple physical demonstrations meant to inspire and motivate students. The book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students in VHDL and digital circuit design, and can be used as a professional reference for VHDL practitioners. It can also serve as a text for digital VLSI in-house or academic courses.