Digital Design with VHDL

Presented by: Amir Masoud Gharehbaghi Email: amgh@mehr.sharif.edu

Design Hierarchy
Design Specification & Requirement Behavioral Design Register Transfer Level (RTL) Design Logic Design Circuit Design Physical Design Manufacturing

Design Automation (DA)

Automatic doing task in design process:
Transforming one form of design to another Verifying functionality and timing of design Generating test sequence for design validation Documentation

Hardware Description Languages (HDLs)

Describing Hardware for:
Design & Modeling Simulation Synthesis Testing Documentation

VHDL History
Initiated with VHSIC project in 1981 by DoD
VHSIC: Very High Speed Integrated Circuits

In 1983 DoD established requirements for VHSIC HDL (VHDL) In 1987 VHDL became an IEEE standard: VHDL 1076-1987 In 1993 a new version of VHDL released: VHDL 1076-1993

VHDL Specifications
Designing in Various Levels of Abstraction: from Behavioral to Gate Level Support for Design Hierarchy (Structural Design) Library Support Support of Generic Design Timing Control Concurrent & Sequential Statements Type Declaration ..

Components in VHDL
Each Component in VHDL is described as an ENTITY-ARCHITECTURE pair ENTITY part describes the interface of component ARCHITECTURE part describes the functionality and timing of component
An ENTITY may have different ARCHITECTURES, describing the component at various levels and with different details of timing and functionality

ENTITY Declaration
ENTITY entity_name IS generic clause port clause END ENTITY entity_name ;
ENTITY and3 IS GENERIC (delay: TIME := 5 ns); PORT (a, b, c : IN BIT; z : OUT BIT); END and3;

Ports
Ports are Component Interface Signals Each Port has:
Name Mode
IN OUT INOUT BUFFER : Input signals : Output Signals : Bidirectional Signals : Like OUT from outside the component & INOUT from Inside it

Type

Standard Types
Standard Package Types:
BIT BIT_VECTOR BOOLEAN INTEGER REAL TIME CHARACTER STRING

ARCHITECTURE Declaration
ARCHITECTURE arch_name OF entity_name IS architecture declarative part BEGIN concurrent statements END ARCHITECTURE arch_name ;
ARCHITECTURE single_delay OF and3 IS BEGIN z <= a AND b AND c AFTER delay ; END single_delay ;

Concurrent Statements
Concurrent Signal Assignment Component Instantiation Statement Generate Statement Process Statement Block Statement Concurrent Procedure Call Statement Concurrent Assert Statement

Concurrent Signal Assignment

Conditional Signal Assignment Statement Selected Signal Assignment Statement

Conditional Signal Assignment

target <= conditional_waveforms;
conditional_waveforms ::= { waveform WHEN condition ELSE } waveform [ WHEN condition] waveform ::= waveform_element {, waveform_element} | UNAFFECTED waveform_element ::= value_expression [AFTER time_expression] | NULL [AFTER time_expression]

Conditional Signal Assignment Examples

a <= b; a <= 0 AFTER 10 ns ; x <= a AND b OR c ; y <= a AFTER 1 ns WHEN x = y ELSE b ; z <= a AND b, c AFTER 5 ns, 1 AFTER 30 ns WHEN NOW < 1 ms ELSE 0, a AFTER 4 ns, c OR d AFTER 10 ns;

2 Input NAND Gate

ENTITY nand2 IS PORT (a, b: IN BIT; z: OUT BIT); END nand2; ARCHITECTURE no_delay OF nand2 IS BEGIN z <= a NAND b; END no_delay;

3 Input NAND Gate

ENTITY nand3 IS PORT (a, b, c: IN BIT; z: OUT BIT); END nand3; ARCHITECTURE no_delay OF nand3 IS BEGIN z <= NOT (a AND b AND c); END no_delay;

2:1 MUX
ENTITY Mux2x1 IS PORT (a0, a1, sel: IN BIT; z: OUT BIT); END Mux2x1; ARCHITECTURE conditional OF Mux2x1 IS BEGIN z <= a0 WHEN sel = 0 ELSE a1; END conditional;

VHDL Operators
Logical AND , NAND , OR , NOR , XOR , XNOR Relational = , /= , < , <= , > , >= Shift SLL , SRL , SLA , SRA , ROL , ROR Adding + , - , & Sign +,Multiplying * , / , MOD , REM Miscellaneous ABS , **

Selected Signal Assignment

WITH expression SELECT target <= selected_waveforms ;
selected_waveforms ::= { waveform WHEN choices, } waveform WHEN choices choices ::= choice { | choice } choice ::= expression | range | simple_name | OTHERS

2:1 MUX
ARCHITECTURE selected OF Mux2x1 IS BEGIN WITH sel SELECT z <= a0 WHEN 0, a1 WHEN 1; -- a1 WHEN OTHERS; END selected;

Component Instantiation Statement

label: instantiated_unit [ GENERIC MAP (association_list) ] [ PORT MAP (association_list) ] ;
instantiated_unit ::= [COMPONENT] component_name | ENTITY entity_name [ (architecture_name) ] | CONFIGURATION configuration_name association_list ::= association_element { , association_element } association_element ::= [ formal_part => ] actual_part

4:1 MUX (using entity)

ENTITY Mux4x1 IS PORT (a : IN BIT_VECTOR(3 DOWNTO 0); sel: IN BIT_VECTOR(0 TO 1) ; z: OUT BIT); END Mux4x1; ARCHITECTURE mux2x1_based OF Mux4x1 IS SIGNAL im0, im1 : BIT; BEGIN m1: ENTITY WORK.Mux2x1(conditional) PORT MAP (a(0), a(1), sel(0), im0); m2: ENTITY WORK.Mux2x1(conditional) PORT MAP (a(2), a(3), sel(0), im1); m3: ENTITY WORK.Mux2x1(selected) PORT MAP (im0, im1, sel(1), z); END mux2x1_based;

4:1 MUX (using component)

ARCHITECTURE comp_based OF Mux4x1 IS SIGNAL im0, im1 : BIT; COMPONENT mux2 PORT (a0, a1, sel: IN BIT; z: OUT BIT); END COMPONENT; FOR ALL: mux2 USE ENTITY WORK.Mux2x1(conditional); BEGIN m1: mux2 PORT MAP (a(0), a(1), sel(0), im0); m2: mux2 PORT MAP (a(2), a(3), sel(0), im1); m3: mux2 PORT MAP (a0 =>im0, a1 =>im1, sel =>sel(1), z => z); END comp_based;

4:1 MUX (another binding)

ARCHITECTURE another OF Mux4x1 IS SIGNAL im0, im1 : BIT; COMPONENT mux2 PORT (a0, a1, sel: IN BIT; z: OUT BIT); END COMPONENT; FOR m1, m2: mux2 USE ENTITY WORK.Mux2x1(conditional); FOR OTHERS: mux2 USE ENTITY WORK.Mux2x1(selected); BEGIN m1: mux2 PORT MAP (a(0), a(1), sel(0), im0); m2: mux2 PORT MAP (a(2), a(3), sel(0), im1); m3: mux2 PORT MAP (a0 =>im0, a1 =>im1, sel =>sel(1), z => z); END another;

Testing the Mux4x1

ENTITY test_mux4x1 IS END test_mux4x1; ARCHITECTURE test1 OF test_mux4x1 IS SIGNAL inp: BIT_VECTOR(3 DOWNTO 0); SIGNAL sel: BIT_VECTOR(1 DOWNTO 0); SIGNAL outp: BIT; BEGIN comp: ENTITY Mux4x1(another) PORT MAP (inp, sel, outp); inp <= "0101", "1101" AFTER 50 ns, "1110" AFTER 100 ns, "0011" AFTER 200 ns; sel <= "00", "01" AFTER 20 ns, "11" AFTER 60 ns, "10" AFTER 90 ns, "00" AFTER 180 ns; END test1;