The Designer's Guide to VHDL (Systems on Silicon)

By P.R. Krishnaiah

Since the publication of the first edition of The Designer's Guide to VHDL in 1996, digital electronic systems have increased exponentially in their complexity, product lifetimes have dramatically shrunk, and reliability requirements have shot through the roof. As a result more and more designers have turned to VHDL to help them dramatically improve productivity as well as the quality of their designs. VHDL, the IEEE standard hardware description language for describing digital electronic systems, allows engineers to describe the structure and specify the function of a digital system as well as simulate and test it before manufacturing. In addition, designers use VHDL to synthesize a more detailed structure of the design, freeing them to concentrate on more strategic design decisions and reduce time to market. Adopted by designers around the world, the VHDL family of standards have recently been revised to address a range of issues, including portability across synthesis tools. This best-selling comprehensive tutorial for the language and authoritative reference on its use in hardware design at all levels--from system to gates--has been revised to reflect the new IEEE standard, VHDL-2001. Peter Ashenden, a member of the IEEE VHDL standards committee, presents the entire description language and builds a modeling methodology based on successful software engineering techniques. Reviewers on Amazon.com have consistently rated the first edition with five stars. This second edition updates the first, retaining the authors unique ability to teach this complex subject to a broad audience of students and practicing professionals.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558606742
• ISBN13: 9781558606746
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
• Length: 759 Pages
• Weight: 2.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

An opinion

Though I have some background in VHDL, the amount of information you can gain from this book is exceptional. There are plenty of examples and the structure of the flow of information is well engineered However, the fact that it touches many topic in much detail can turn into a disadvantage for beginners.

The only VHDL book you need.

I have a couple of other VHDL books but I can't find them, for some reason I have two of copies of 'The Designer's Guide to VHDL'. When reading this book it is apparent that Ashenden thoroughly understands VHDL - excellent examples and I really like the VHDL-93 viewpoint with the VHDL-87 differences sprinkled throughout. If you really want to learn to design first-class test benches, you need this book. It has text IO...

Nothing comes close to this book.

Before Ashenden there was Douglas Perry. Perry's book on VHDL (Second Edition) was pretty well written and handled HDL for synthesis quite well. After Perry, I was introduced to Ashenden's "The Designer's Guide to VHDL". This is by far the must have VHDL reference manual. Ask yourself, what is important in a good reference manual...the answer is well organized concepts, good examples and a thorough index! This book has...

A excellent desk reference

Ashenden covers many of the finer points of the VHDL language including differences between '87 and '93 implementations. I have used suggestions from his book with Cadence, Synopsys, Altera, Xilinx, and Model Tech tools for several years without any problems(all source code for the book is available at his web site). In addition, this is one of the few books to handle text and file I/O adequately, a real necessity for test...

very good, as a reference

The Designer's Guide to Vhdl, by Peter J. Ashenden is a very good book for all level of Vhdl programming. Tutors the basic to advance level programming in Vhdl. Extensively covers the Behavior Modeling by many examples and case studies. If you are looking something on synthesis, this book does not cover whole lot on it, but it's worth buying for reference since the price of the book is not that expensive compare to others...