RTL Hardware Design Using VHDL: Coding for Efficiency, Portability, and Scalability
by Pong P. Chu
CHAPTER 2
OVERVIEW OF HARDWARE DESCRIPTION LANGUAGES
A digital system can be described at different levels of abstractions and from different points of view. As the design process progresses, the level and view are changed, either by human designers or by software tools. It is desirable to have a common framework to exchange information among the designers and various software tools. Hardware description languages (HDLs) serve this purpose. In this chapter we provide an overview of the design, use and capability of HDLs. The basic concept and essential modeling features are introduced by a series of codes to show the “big picture” of HDLs. The detailed syntax, language constructs and associated semantics are discussed in subsequent chapters.
2.1 HARDWARE DESCRIPTION LANGUAGES
A digital system can be described at different levels of abstraction and from different points of view. An HDL should faithfully and accurately model and describe a circuit, whether already built or under development, from either the structural or behavioral views, at the desired level of abstraction. Because HDLs are modeled after hardware, their semantics and use are very different from those of traditional programming languages. The following subsections discuss the need, use and design of an HDL.
2.1.1 Limitations of traditional programming languages
There are wide varieties of computer programming languages, from Fortran to C to Java. Unfortunately, they are not adequate to model digital hardware. To ...
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