A Practical Guide to VHDL Design

M. Cirstea, A. Dinu, D. Nicula

Editura Tehnica, Bucharest, Romania

ISBN: 973-31-1539-8

Preface | Table of Contents

Preface

The idea of writing this book has arisen from the need to teach the main features / principles of VHDL design to advanced digital electronics students in a very short time and based on a practical approach. This primarily attempts to form design skills using VHDL rather than to provide an in-depth theoretical description of the language. Therefore, the book mainly aims to be a quick learning guide / user guide for students/beginners interested to learn VHDL design. In the same time, it is structured in a manner that addresses more complex needs of professional designers using VHDL by including a series of comprehensive design examples. It facilitates the understanding of hardware description language basics and it provides a practical, example-based approach to learning VHDL design.

There is a large number of design engineers who prefer to develop a design module and/or learn another design method - in this case the VHDL language - by following given examples rather than reading a lot of descriptive theory. The first section of the book contains a description of the VHDL language, briefly covering most of the main aspects, which will allow a beginner student to understand the essence of this HDL and will also serve to a VHDL designer as a review / quick guide of the language. The second section contains complete examples of common digital electronic design modules. They can be used by students as a quick guide to start writing VHDL code, and by experienced designers as "core" elements for developing complex digital systems. Most of the examples presented can be used as such. Thanks are due to all students who helped in testing the VHDL files used as examples.

However, in order to complete the design of advanced digital systems and/or for a deeper understanding of the very complex features of VHDL, extra reading is strongly recommended and some well structured and comprehensive material is listed in the Bibliographical section of the book. The titles mentioned cover in details most of the VHDL theoretical aspects, and include complete examples. The main positive difference offered by this book is that it will be a quick and short guide through the complex matters of VHDL design rather than a prolix approach of the topic. In the same time it gives complex models / examples of VHDL synthesisable code, which can be used by both beginner students or experienced designers. The cost of the book will hopefully make it affordable to a large number of students.

The authors.

Table of Contents