Customer Reviews

Verilog Digital System Design: Register Transfer Level Synthesis, Testbench, and Verification

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have used this book in my graduate level course. As a intermediate level person, I have found this book very useful to understand the design process, simulation, synthesis and etc. I would strongly recommend this book for both beginners and intermediate level programmers, as concept of HDL is written clearly in an understandable way. A person who is interested in the Digital Circuit Design would find an excellent flow between each chapters, and informations in each chapters are described very well. On the other hand, I found that the book is kind of outdated, and someone who wants to use this book as a Reference Book may not find it useful.

Where do I start? I was looking for a well-written, well-illustrated, well-organized, example-rich, pertinent guide to writing synthesizeable Verilog code. This book scores low on all of those fronts. Perhaps there are engineers who find this book useful, but if you design sequential logic, heavy with state machines and data flows, such as those found in digital communication systems, you won't be happy with this book. It is more of an academic guide than a practical engineer's guide.

Verilog is probably the most common package for modelling digital circuits. Navabi provides detailed instructions on how to use it for many types of circuits. We see how Verilog can provide different levels of modelling. From the Register Transfer Level to doing higher level synthesis. This lets you simulate either a small circuit, to great depth, or to scale to much larger sets of transistors.

The testbenching ability of Verilog is emphasised. Vital in checking the validity of performance of your circuits, before you tape out to silicon. One of Verilog's strengths is how its testbenching can save you time and money. Provided you take full advantage of it.

If you want to learn Verilog but you're not familiar with logic
design, then this book is just what you're looking for! Not only the hardware description language but also many useful basic logic constructs are introduced in this book. Most other books on Verilog only concentrate on the language itself, and often only the synthesizable part of the language, it might be usful for people who know logic design very well, but it will be difficult for those who want to learn the language and design at the same time. Many examples are presented in the book, including full-adder, shifter registers.... Also the book presents a simple CPU model as well as it's peripherals, so reader can also learn computer architecture and how to model these structures with
Verilog. I think this is an excellent text book to use in a university.
I think it'll be great if there can be a book like this that give you knowledge of both logic design and hardware language but focus more on people who have experience with hardware design. Engineers will love a book that target to their needs, a reference book they can look at for problems in their design works. Engineers want to open a book and find what they're looking for quickly,they don't want to read the book from front to back. So the book should be different than a text book used in a university.
I'm sure if such a book can be published soon,it'll be very usful to the IT community.

I found this book to be very helpful over other books. I like the style of writing. It was easy for me to read and understand than a other books I have read on the subject. The examples are also meaningful and relavent for new users. I found other books to be too abstract, or go into too much detail on topics that are not useful for new users. I would give it 5 stars, but I agree with others that the book isn't very good for reference.

This is an excellent book for beginners. I especially like how the examples are organized. It starts with the basic ones and ends with a complete working CPU. The later examples use the earlier ones as basic modules, which is very helpful for beginners.

The materials included in the CD are very useful with the exception of the software, which is outdated now. Hope the latest software will be included in the CD with the new edition of the book.

This book concentrates too much on how to write code. It does not provide in-depth knowledge of the subject.

Cheep and very good introduction into Verilog. I'm currently using this book very heavily. I look at the examples very heavily, but haven't really read it strait through. I jump all over the place depending on what my implementation requires.

If you are looking for a book that teaches you hardware design with Verilog, this is the one you must have, for the following reasons:

1. The flow of the book is from introductory to complex, very reader-friendly, especially for beginners. The content is easy to absorb, which covers hardware design & synthesis, Verilog language details, and computer organization concepts.

2. The book is not just an explanation of Verilog language. It actually illustrates the concepts of hardware system design with Verilog: it interprets Verilog constructs related to various design stages and design abstractions: behavioral description, dataflow description, and structure description. It emphasizes the concepts of concurrency and delay in hardware, which is very important in grasping the gist of HDLs.

3. There are abundant examples all well written for various design situations. The examples range from simple to complex, from an adder to a complete CPU. Most of example code can be used in real-world designs, or as templates, especially the state machine examples, and the test bench examples. A CD containing all the examples is supplied with the book.

4. If you ever want to be a bi-linguist (Verilog and VHDL) or a translator, the structure of this book parallels with the author's VHDL book. Most of the examples are available in both languages. As a result, you can learn the other language easily. I keep both books handy for my daily work.

5. There is a problem set in each chapter, which is very helpful in reviewing and testing the key points in the chapter.

This book does an OK job in explaining the language for a beginner. However, it falls short with the details of the language. I had accidentally left the book at the school, right after the exam, and didn't go back to pick it up (even though I was only a block away). If I end up needing a book, I will try to find a better reference book.