Customer Reviews

Digital Electronics and Design with VHDL

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While reading *Digital Electronics and Design with VHDL*, I was happy to find a
text that had such grounded roots. A good amount of the examples are directly
applicable to todays digital electronics engineer in the worlds of ASIC, FPGA
and general PCB design.

I've separated out this review into separate sections to cover two different
views of the book: Digital Electronics and VHDL. While the title suggests they
are presented hand-in-hand, upon further inspection they are, indeed, mutually
exclusive. Digital Electronics encompasses the first 18 chapters followed by
VHDL for the last 5 chapters.

## Digital Electronics ##

The main emphasis of this book is clearly on the digital electronics aspect.
Starting with a very detailed look at the history of the transistor and
integrated circuit (IC) technology, the book is packed with solid information
without getting lost in too many details.

Both sequential and combinatorial logic is covered in full detail with
accompanying transistor-level schematics and even wafer-level cross-sections
when applicable.

All examples inline with the text are titled, well diagrammed and explained,
and provides a solution for greater understanding.

The exercises at the end of each chapter are all very relevant questions which
professionals face in the real world (power consumption, timing analysis,
fan-out, etc). Moreover, each exercise is appropriately titled to provide a
reference to the applicable section of text.

## VHDL ##

VHDL is introduced in Chapter 19 of the book, and is covered in quite a hurry.
It seems that the audience for this section of the book is someone who has
already had some experience with VHDL as a language and is not a complete
novice.

While I am happy the text focuses mainly on synthesizable designs that actually
work in a programmable logic device, the examples are riddled with
inconsistencies and even bad practice. For example, the author explains how
`STD_LOGIC` is the industry standard but the examples use `BIT`. Another
example uses a `BUFFER` which is not good practice and may cause synthesis
issues. Lastly, small problems in examples such as using an `INTEGER` for a
bit width generic input instead of a `POSITIVE`.

I was delighted to see a good description of the `NUMERIC_STD` package
versus the `STD_LOGIC_ARITH` package, and ecstatic to see the emphasis
put on using the IEEE accepted `NUMERIC_STD` package. On the other
hand, the author doesn't do a good job describing behavioral versus structural
design and never performs any file IO.

Lastly, the state machines in the examples, while syntactically correct, are
not very well written. The code presented is obviously for a demonstrable
purpose and not useful for extensibility or beneficial towards the advancement
of anyone's career in programmable logic.

## Conclusions ##

Overall, I feel the book deserved 3.5-stars, but there are a few caveats. If I
were to rate this book on the *Digital Electronics* aspect, I would bump up
the rating to be a full 5-stars. There is not one area for which I would not
use this as a desk reference as well as an immediate teaching tool for
beginners who need a good place to start.

On the other hand, if I were to rate this book strictly on the *VHDL* aspect,
I would have to take the rating down to 2-stars. It's great to see a reference
where the designs are synthesizable, but there are too many inconsistencies
within the code itself to make me feel comfortable using it as a solid
reference.

Teaching or learning FPGA-based digital circuit design is never easy. However, once a teacher, a student or a practicing engineer equip him or herself with such a book, life will be much easier. The book includes a self-contained part on VHDL language description with a large number of examples. These examples provide applications using most of the building blocks of combinational and sequential digital circuits. The examples are discussed, with implementable VHDL code. The code is explained in a leisurely pedantic and simple manner that is quite easy to understand. The design examples are provided with synthesis, simulation and elaborate comments. A chapter that covers SPICE provides a background on circuit simulation.

The material contained between the two end-pages of this book facilitates the work expected by computer or electronic engineers. The book is a great addition to my library and I have to congratulate the author on a job well-done.

I have used the first edition "Circuit Design with VHDL" by Pedroni 6 times to teach a VHDL/FPLD course and me and my students liked the book a lot, since (1) All important HDL language elements are covered, (2) the VHDL examples really work, (3) has many home works with solution for instructors and (4) also a good overview on FPLD devices. Now with the second edition out you can use the same book to teach both, digital logic and a VHDL course, which saves students essential time and money. I plan to use it for my courses for many years to come. In summary: An excellent text books just got even better!

I took a course taught by Professor Pedroni in which this was the main text. In general this is a very good reference of general digital design, VHDL and common synthesizable usage. There is a good amount of examples and the descriptions are very clear and concise and the language is very easy to understand. At the end of each section are exercises that not only test you on how much you learned in each section, but also force you to take a step forward and find some intricacies of the language out for yourself.

The book is divided into several sections which include general design techniques, VHDL syntax, combination and sequential logic, specific algorithms and hardware implementations of arithmetic operations (multiplication, division, etc) and even simple introductions to certain tools (such as spice). I feel that the large focus of the book is "Digital Design" and not specifically VHDL itself. The VHDL is included only out of necessity to supplement the digital design aspect.

Pedroni does a good job in emphasizing the different libraries available to most VHDL users (such as std_logic and numeric_std). Since choosing the correct libraries is probably the most important part of starting a project, the book does well to cover these in detail.

The only issue I had with the book was that it didn't delve very deeply into advanced usage of VHDL. It mainly focuses on synthesizable code, which is fine, but when it comes to verification and simulation, you may find yourself wanting. That's not to say that there isn't coverage of simulation within the text. For this reason, I would recommend this book as an introduction to designers.

As a previous reviewer mentioned, if judged as a VHDL book, it is merely a good introduction; however, if judged as a digital design book, it is quite good. For those who are just starting to learn about digital design or want to learn a HDL, I would definitely recommend this as the first or second text.

This is an excellent book for use in a formal digital design class taught to 2nd year undergrads in a university setting.

The first part (non-VHDL) of the book is really more material than the typical 1-semester digital design course can possibly cover - compare to something like Mano's text which contains a good bit less material overall. Therefore, an actual prof or lecturer is needed to assign the pertinent portions of the book for reading and problem-solving. The fascinating thing about this book is that it is not afraid to show the details of how digital systems are really implemented today - not just in idealized and abstract gates and K-maps. Again, if comparing to Mano's book, the actual transistor layouts are shown, examples of circuit optimization are given, and references to actual working designs are also provided (PowerPC603, MIPS, AMD K6, etc.) The chapters on interfaces, codes, etc. are also refreshing - typically digital design books for sophomore-level students do not include that kind of information.

All that information is great, but a college sophomore generally doesn't yet understand the details of a transistor's operation, hasn't yet learned to read schematic, doesn't get semiconductor physics, etc. In a digital design course there isn't even time to get into these details - there are too many fundamentals that need to be covered first. Digital design is one of the first few major-specific courses students take, after completing physics, calculus, chemistry, etc. So, the true value of this information becomes apparent only later. The sections on transistor physics in this book do not replace a formal class on the subject; but, when learning this stuff it is very helpful to look back on the Pedroni text as an intro; also, when going out into the "real" world or when taking a senior-level design course, the sections on interface standards become dramatically more valuable. Situations like this abound - Pedroni tries to link digital design with the other disciplines that need to be understood for students to work commercially.

Bottom line: if this book is required for your digital design class, consider yourself lucky, and don't sell the book at the end of the semester. If you're buying this to brush up on some stuff as a practicing engineer, there's probably better texts for that purpose. For self-study outside of the college/uni level - forget it, this book has simply too much to digest at once. For learning VHDL there are also better texts out there, such as Pedroni's own VHDL book, which I have also reviewed.

The book "Digital Electronics and Design with VHDL" was a good review of digital logic design, and a good review of the essential elements of VHDL.

For logic design, I consider it a review, only because other books show more worked examples with more detailed explanations.

For the VHDL section, several examples are offered that parallel the examples from the design section, which helps correlate to the design principles. Also, the VHDL examples can be more complicated or detailed, handling more bits in parallel than the logic designed by "hand". This shows the power of design using the higher level VHDL.

This book is a really good handbook on digital circuit design. All basic digital circuits/components are discussed and there is room for simplifying techniques in order to get the smallest circuitry. Sequential and combinatorial circuits are also handled.
This book has a lot of worked out examples, which is very good.
There are also questions/problems in each chapter, but the answers are missing. This is a pitty, because the answers cannot be checked.

The VHDL part of this book handles the matter very quick. If you're not familiar with VHDL, it is somewhat difficult to read through this part.
To my opinion, more details of VHDL is necessary to make this book an excellent handbook.
When programming in VHDL, this book is very usable in searching for digital components when translating digital circuitry into code.