09-10-2010, 03:56 PM
VHDL (VHSIC hardware description language;
VHDL (VHSIC hardware description language; VHSIC: very-high-speed integrated circuit) 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
History
VHDL was originally developed at the behest of the US Department of Defense in order to document the behavior of the ASICs that supplier companies were including in equipment. That is to say, VHDL was developed as an alternative to huge, complex manuals which were subject to implementation-specific details.
The idea of being able to simulate this documentation was so obviously attractive that logic simulators were developed that could read the VHDL files. The next step was the development of logic synthesis tools that read the VHDL, and output a definition of the physical implementation of the circuit. Modern synthesis tools can extract RAM, counter, and arithmetic blocks out of the code, and implement them according to what the user specifies. Thus, the same VHDL code could be synthesized differently for lowest area, lowest power consumption, highest clock speed, or other requirements.
VHDL borrows heavily from the Ada programming language in both concepts (for example, the slice notation for indexing part of a one-dimensional array) and syntax. VHDL has constructs to handle the parallelism inherent in hardware designs, but these constructs (processes) differ in syntax from the parallel constructs in Ada (tasks). Like Ada, VHDL is strongly typed and is not case sensitive. There are many features of VHDL which are not found in Ada, such as an extended set of Boolean operators including nand and nor, in order to directly represent operations which are common in hardware. VHDL also allows arrays to be indexed in either direction (ascending or descending) because both conventions are used in hardware, whereas Ada (like most programming languages) provides ascending indexing only. The reason for the similarity between the two languages is that the Department of Defense required as much of the syntax as possible to be based on Ada, in order to avoid re-inventing concepts that had already been thoroughly tested in the development of Ada.
The initial version of VHDL, designed to IEEE standard 1076-1987, included a wide range of data types, including numerical (integer and real), logical (bit and boolean), character and time, plus arrays of bit called bit_vector and of character called string.
A problem not solved by this edition, however, was "multi-valued logic", where a signal's drive strength (none, weak or strong) and unknown values are also considered. This required IEEE standard 1164, which defined the 9-value logic types: scalar std_ulogic and its vector version std_ulogic_vector.
The second issue of IEEE 1076, in 1993, made the syntax more consistent, allowed more flexibility in naming, extended the character type to allow ISO-8859-1 printable characters, added the xnor operator, etc.
Minor changes in the standard (2000 and 2002) added the idea of protected types (similar to the concept of class in C++) and removed some restrictions from port mapping rules.
In addition to IEEE standard 1164, several child standards were introduced to extend functionality of the language. IEEE standard 1076.2 added better handling of real and complex data types. IEEE standard 1076.3 introduced signed and unsigned types to facilitate arithmetical operations on vectors. IEEE standard 1076.1 (known as VHDL-AMS) provided analog and mixed-signal circuit design extensions.
Some other standards support wider use of VHDL, notably VITAL (VHDL Initiative Towards ASIC Libraries) and microwave circuit design extensions.
In June 2006, VHDL Technical Committee of Accellera (delegated by IEEE to work on next update of the standard) approved so called Draft 3.0 of VHDL-2006. While maintaining full compatibility with older versions, this proposed standard provides numerous extensions that make writing and managing VHDL code easier. Key changes include incorporation of child standards (1164, 1076.2, 1076.3) into the main 1076 standard, an extended set of operators, more flexible syntax of 'case' and 'generate' statements, incorporation of VHPI (interface to C/C++ languages) and a subset of PSL (Property Specification Language). These changes should improve quality of synthesizable VHDL code, make testbenches more flexible, and allow wider use of VHDL for system-level descriptions.
In February 2008, Accellera approved VHDL 4.0 also informally known as VHDL 2008, which addressed more than 90 issues discovered during the trial period for version 3.0 and includes enhanced generic types. In 2008, Accellera released VHDL 4.0 to the IEEE for balloting for inclusion in IEEE 1076-2008. The VHDL standard IEEE 1076-2008 was approved by REVCOM in September 2008.
Design
VHDL is a fairly general-purpose language, and it doesn't require a simulator on which to run the code. There are many VHDL compilers, which build executable binaries. It can read and write files on the host computer, so a VHDL program can be written that generates another VHDL program to be incorporated in the design being developed. Because of this general-purpose nature, it is possible to use VHDL to write a testbench that verifies the functionality of the design using files on the host computer to define stimuli, interacts with the user, and compares results with those expected.
It is relatively easy for an inexperienced developer to produce code that simulates successfully but that cannot be synthesized into a real device, or is too large to be practical. One particular pitfall is the accidental production of transparent latches rather than D-type flip-flops as storage elements.
VHDL is not a case sensitive language. One can design hardware in a VHDL IDE (for FPGA implementation such as Xilinx ISE, Altera Quartus, or Synopsys Synplify) to produce the RTL schematic of the desired circuit. After that, the generated schematic can be verified using simulation software which shows the waveforms of inputs and outputs of the circuit after generating the appropriate testbench. To generate an appropriate testbench for a particular circuit or VHDL code, the inputs have to be defined correctly. For example, for clock input, a loop process or an iterative statement is required.
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 (many parts, each with its own sub-behavior, working together at the same time). 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 final point is that when a VHDL model is translated into the "gates and wires" that are mapped onto a programmable logic device such as a CPLD or FPGA, then it is the actual hardware being configured, rather than the VHDL code being "executed" as if on some form of a processor chip.
[edit] Design Examples
In VHDL, a design consists at a minimum of an entity which describes the interface and an architecture which contains the actual implementation. In addition, most designs import library modules. Some designs also contain multiple architectures and configurations.
A simple AND gate in VHDL would look something like this:
-- (this is a VHDL comment)
Future
VHDL-200X is been developed as the next iteration for VHDL. This will allow VHDL developers to write combined Hardware Description Language and Hardware Verification Language code. VHDL-200X is the VHDL alternative to SystemVerilog.
VHDL (VHSIC hardware description language; VHSIC: very-high-speed integrated circuit) 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
History
VHDL was originally developed at the behest of the US Department of Defense in order to document the behavior of the ASICs that supplier companies were including in equipment. That is to say, VHDL was developed as an alternative to huge, complex manuals which were subject to implementation-specific details.
The idea of being able to simulate this documentation was so obviously attractive that logic simulators were developed that could read the VHDL files. The next step was the development of logic synthesis tools that read the VHDL, and output a definition of the physical implementation of the circuit. Modern synthesis tools can extract RAM, counter, and arithmetic blocks out of the code, and implement them according to what the user specifies. Thus, the same VHDL code could be synthesized differently for lowest area, lowest power consumption, highest clock speed, or other requirements.
VHDL borrows heavily from the Ada programming language in both concepts (for example, the slice notation for indexing part of a one-dimensional array) and syntax. VHDL has constructs to handle the parallelism inherent in hardware designs, but these constructs (processes) differ in syntax from the parallel constructs in Ada (tasks). Like Ada, VHDL is strongly typed and is not case sensitive. There are many features of VHDL which are not found in Ada, such as an extended set of Boolean operators including nand and nor, in order to directly represent operations which are common in hardware. VHDL also allows arrays to be indexed in either direction (ascending or descending) because both conventions are used in hardware, whereas Ada (like most programming languages) provides ascending indexing only. The reason for the similarity between the two languages is that the Department of Defense required as much of the syntax as possible to be based on Ada, in order to avoid re-inventing concepts that had already been thoroughly tested in the development of Ada.
The initial version of VHDL, designed to IEEE standard 1076-1987, included a wide range of data types, including numerical (integer and real), logical (bit and boolean), character and time, plus arrays of bit called bit_vector and of character called string.
A problem not solved by this edition, however, was "multi-valued logic", where a signal's drive strength (none, weak or strong) and unknown values are also considered. This required IEEE standard 1164, which defined the 9-value logic types: scalar std_ulogic and its vector version std_ulogic_vector.
The second issue of IEEE 1076, in 1993, made the syntax more consistent, allowed more flexibility in naming, extended the character type to allow ISO-8859-1 printable characters, added the xnor operator, etc.
Minor changes in the standard (2000 and 2002) added the idea of protected types (similar to the concept of class in C++) and removed some restrictions from port mapping rules.
In addition to IEEE standard 1164, several child standards were introduced to extend functionality of the language. IEEE standard 1076.2 added better handling of real and complex data types. IEEE standard 1076.3 introduced signed and unsigned types to facilitate arithmetical operations on vectors. IEEE standard 1076.1 (known as VHDL-AMS) provided analog and mixed-signal circuit design extensions.
Some other standards support wider use of VHDL, notably VITAL (VHDL Initiative Towards ASIC Libraries) and microwave circuit design extensions.
In June 2006, VHDL Technical Committee of Accellera (delegated by IEEE to work on next update of the standard) approved so called Draft 3.0 of VHDL-2006. While maintaining full compatibility with older versions, this proposed standard provides numerous extensions that make writing and managing VHDL code easier. Key changes include incorporation of child standards (1164, 1076.2, 1076.3) into the main 1076 standard, an extended set of operators, more flexible syntax of 'case' and 'generate' statements, incorporation of VHPI (interface to C/C++ languages) and a subset of PSL (Property Specification Language). These changes should improve quality of synthesizable VHDL code, make testbenches more flexible, and allow wider use of VHDL for system-level descriptions.
In February 2008, Accellera approved VHDL 4.0 also informally known as VHDL 2008, which addressed more than 90 issues discovered during the trial period for version 3.0 and includes enhanced generic types. In 2008, Accellera released VHDL 4.0 to the IEEE for balloting for inclusion in IEEE 1076-2008. The VHDL standard IEEE 1076-2008 was approved by REVCOM in September 2008.
Design
VHDL is a fairly general-purpose language, and it doesn't require a simulator on which to run the code. There are many VHDL compilers, which build executable binaries. It can read and write files on the host computer, so a VHDL program can be written that generates another VHDL program to be incorporated in the design being developed. Because of this general-purpose nature, it is possible to use VHDL to write a testbench that verifies the functionality of the design using files on the host computer to define stimuli, interacts with the user, and compares results with those expected.
It is relatively easy for an inexperienced developer to produce code that simulates successfully but that cannot be synthesized into a real device, or is too large to be practical. One particular pitfall is the accidental production of transparent latches rather than D-type flip-flops as storage elements.
VHDL is not a case sensitive language. One can design hardware in a VHDL IDE (for FPGA implementation such as Xilinx ISE, Altera Quartus, or Synopsys Synplify) to produce the RTL schematic of the desired circuit. After that, the generated schematic can be verified using simulation software which shows the waveforms of inputs and outputs of the circuit after generating the appropriate testbench. To generate an appropriate testbench for a particular circuit or VHDL code, the inputs have to be defined correctly. For example, for clock input, a loop process or an iterative statement is required.
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 (many parts, each with its own sub-behavior, working together at the same time). 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 final point is that when a VHDL model is translated into the "gates and wires" that are mapped onto a programmable logic device such as a CPLD or FPGA, then it is the actual hardware being configured, rather than the VHDL code being "executed" as if on some form of a processor chip.
[edit] Design Examples
In VHDL, a design consists at a minimum of an entity which describes the interface and an architecture which contains the actual implementation. In addition, most designs import library modules. Some designs also contain multiple architectures and configurations.
A simple AND gate in VHDL would look something like this:
-- (this is a VHDL comment)
Future
VHDL-200X is been developed as the next iteration for VHDL. This will allow VHDL developers to write combined Hardware Description Language and Hardware Verification Language code. VHDL-200X is the VHDL alternative to SystemVerilog.