The Designer's Guide to VHDL (Systems on Silicon) [Paperback]

Peter J. Ashenden (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1558602704 | ISBN-13: 978-1558602700 | Publication Date: October 15, 1995 | Edition: 1st

The Designer's Guide to VHDL is both a comprehensive manual for the language and an authoritative reference on its use in hardware design at all levels, from system level down to gate level. Using the IEEE standard for VHDL, the author presents the entire description language and builds a modeling methodology based on successful software engineering techniques. Requiring only a minimal background in programming, this is an excellent tutorial for anyone in computer architecture, digital systems engineering, or CAD.
The book is organized so that it can either be read cover to cover for a comprehensive tutorial or be kept deskside as a reference to the language. Each chapter introduces a number of related concepts or language facilities and illustrates each one with examples. Scattered throughout the book are four case studies, which bring together preceding material in the form of extended worked examples. In addition, each chapter is followed by a set of rated exercises.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

VHDL may sound like a new Internet language, but it really stands for VHSIC (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit) Hardware Definition Language. VHDL borrows ideas from software engineering (architectural, behavior, and formal models, as well as modular design) and is used to design today's custom integrated circuits, from cell phones to microwave ovens and even CPUs. Peter Ashenden's The Designer's Guide to VHDL shows you how to use this language to write a hardware design, which you can then test in a simulator before "synthesizing" it into an actual hardware design in silicon.

The book begins with the basics of VHDL, which, like any software language, has keywords, operators, flow control statements, and programming conventions. Next, the author introduces his first case study--a "pipelined multiplier accumulator," which simulates a CPU register. He then moves on to more complicated models, such as a design for a complete CPU (the DLX processor, which is used as a model for educating future CPU designers). More advanced aspects of VHDL follow, including guard signals, abstract data types, and even file I/O. A final case study (for a "queuing network") puts these components into practice. The book closes with a discussion of "synthesizers"--additional software tools that convert a VHDL specification into silicon--and how these tools impose design limits. The appendices include Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) enhancements to VHDL, which have increased the design language's power. Although most of us won't ever need to design our own integrated circuit, this book shows how it's done. Engineering students who need to master VHDL during a semester-length course, will find Ashenden's guide to be indispensable--and written in an accessible style rarely found in engineering texts.

Review

The Designer's Guide to VHDL is both a comprehensive manual for the language and an authoritative reference on its use in hardware design at all levels, from system level down to gate level. Using the IEEE standard for VHDL, the author presents the entire description language and builds a modeling methodology based on successful software engineering techniques. Requiring only a minimal background in programming, this is an excellent tutorial for anyone in computer architecture, digital systems engineering, or CAD.

The book is organized so that it can either be read cover to cover for a comprehensive tutorial or be kept deskside as a reference to the language. Each chapter introduces a number of related concepts or language facilities and illustrates each one with examples. Scattered throughout the book are four case studies, which bring together preceding material in the form of extended worked examples. In addition, each chapter is followed by a set of rated exercises. -- Book Description

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 668 pages
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (October 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1558602704
• ISBN-13: 978-1558602700
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,041,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The best VHDL reference to date, February 20, 2001

By 

C. McManis "Chuck McManis" (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Designer's Guide to VHDL (Systems on Silicon) (Paperback)

Until Peter's next book comes out of course! I would give it 5 stars if I was just learning the VHDL language, but I'm actually trying to use VHDL for FPGA design and this book falls short in that regard.

This book is really good at explaining the 'mechanics' of VHDL programming. It is an out growth of Peter's "Intro to VHDL" paper that was published on the web and it sort of shows. I really like the depth that it goes into, I wish it had the standard libraries in the appendix. (it doesn't) However, until getting Ashendon's book, all other VHDL texts were pretty opaque.

The only thing this book does not have is a treatment of logic 'inference.' Since all VHDL compilers today "infer" (a fancy way of saying "guess") what logic would be able to implement a behavior, not understanding how those compilers guess makes it possible to write syntactically clean VHDL that doesn't synthesize any logic. To get a better handle on inference I'd recommend "HDL Chip Design" by Smith.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing comes close to this book., March 2, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Silicon Valley) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Designer's Guide to VHDL (Systems on Silicon) (Paperback)

Before Ashenden there was Douglas Perry. Perry's book on VHDL (Second Edition) was pretty well written and handled HDL for synthesis quite well. After Perry, I was introduced to Ashenden's "The Designer's Guide to VHDL". This is by far the must have VHDL reference manual. Ask yourself, what is important in a good reference manual...the answer is well organized concepts, good examples and a thorough index! This book has it all. I have other VHDL books that just get dusty on my shelf, not this one! If I'm not using it, someone else usually wants to borrow it. If your looking for a great VHDL book...pick this one up or borrow it.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Book for Learning VHDL, July 28, 2000

By 

Jeff Szczepanski "Entrepreneur" (New York) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Designer's Guide to VHDL (Systems on Silicon) (Paperback)

This book has a very detailed and complete coverage of the VHDL langauge. The book is clearly geared to the beginner and serves as a great tutorial on the language, however the depth is good enough that even a seasoned VHDL programmer will find it of good benefit both at increasing their depth in the language and also as a desk reference. My main criticism of the book is that I found it somewhat verbose in description on certain topics. While the detail is needed on the more complex or subtle topics, it seems to drag on with some of the more trivial ideas. In any case, the good clearly wins out in an overall must have VHDL reference.