VHDL – Historical view
• VHDL: VHISC Hardware Description Language • VHISC: Very High Speed Integrated Circuits • Hardware languages are expected to model functionalities that once synthesized will produce physical processing devices, • while software languages describe functions that once compiled will produce code for specific processors. J.-P. Deschamps et al., Digital Systems, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41198-9
• Beginning 1980s • Lack of documentation for behavior and functionality of ASIC • Standardization work initiated by US DoD together with Intermetrics, Texas Instrument, IBM (1983) • 1985: First release of VHDL • Success convinced IEEE* to formalize it into a standard • 1987: IEEE 1076-1987 released • Revised: 1993, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2019 DOI: 10.1109/IEEESTD.1988.122645 *IEEE: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The IEEE library contains a number of packages and the std_logic_1164 is the standard that describes the definitions of logic values and basic logic operations.
• Initially a specification and modeling language - documenting behavior of ASICs • Simulation was the natural next development and logic simulators where developed in the late 1980s. • Finally development of logic synthesis tools to read VHDL and output a definition of the physical implementation of the circuit
Recommend
More recommend