Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Combinational logic
- Part III Arithmetic circuits
- Part IV Synchronous sequential logic
- Part V Practical design
- Part VI System design
- Part VII Asynchronous logic
- Part VIII Appendix: VHDL coding style and syntax guide
- Appendix A VHDL coding style
- Appendix B VHDL syntax guide
- References
- Index of VHDL design entities
- Subject index
Appendix A - VHDL coding style
from Part VIII - Appendix: VHDL coding style and syntax guide
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2019
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Combinational logic
- Part III Arithmetic circuits
- Part IV Synchronous sequential logic
- Part V Practical design
- Part VI System design
- Part VII Asynchronous logic
- Part VIII Appendix: VHDL coding style and syntax guide
- Appendix A VHDL coding style
- Appendix B VHDL syntax guide
- References
- Index of VHDL design entities
- Subject index
Summary
In this appendix we present a few guidelines for VHDL coding style. These guidelines grew out of experience with both VHDL and Verilog description languages. These guidelines developed over many years of teaching students digital design and managing design projects in industry, where the guidelines have been proven to reduce effort, to produce better final designs, and to produce designs that are more readable and maintainable. The many examples of VHDL throughout this book serve as examples of this style. The style presented here is intended for synthesizable designs – VHDL design entities that ultimately map to real hardware. A very different style is used in testbenches. This section is not intended to be a reference manual for VHDL. The following appendix provides a brief summary of the VHDL syntax used in this book and many other references are available online. Rather, this section gives a set of principles and style rules that help designers write correct, maintainable code. A reference manual explains what legal VHDL code is. This appendix explains what good VHDL code is. We give examples of good code and bad code, all of which are legal.
BASIC PRINCIPLES
We start with a few basic principles on which our VHDL style is based. The style presented is essentially a VHDL-2008 equivalent to a set of Verilog style guidelines based upon our experience over many years of teaching students digital design and managing design projects in industry combined with nearly a decade of experience teaching earlier versions of VHDL.
Know where your state is Every bit of state in your design should be explicitly declared. In our style, all state is in explicit flip-flop or register components, and all other portions are purely combinational. This approach avoids a host of problems that arise when writing sequential statements directly within an “if rising\_edge(clk) then” statement inside a process. It also makes it much easier to detect inferred latches that occur when not all signals are assigned in all branches of a conditional statement.
Understand what your design entities will synthesize to When you write a design entity, you should have a good idea what logic will be generated. If your design entity is described structurally, wiring together other components, the outcome is very predictable. Small behavioral design entities and arithmetic blocks are also very predictable.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Digital Design Using VHDLA Systems Approach, pp. 611 - 621Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
Accessibility standard: Unknown
Why this information is here
This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.Accessibility Information
Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this chapter is currently unknown
and may be updated in the future.