On Jan 3, 2014, at 5:12 AM, Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> wrote:
[...]
VHDL is clearly inspired by Ada. I?ve done some
elementary VHDL work and like
it a lot. FWIW, there is an open source VHDL simulator available (just a
simulator, not tied to any real world FPGA) that?s integrated into GCC ?
called GHDL. It seems to work well; I?ve fed it some rather large models that
simulate nicely.
OK, now *that* is enough to lure me into the VHDL world. I stumbled with my
Verilog experiment when I'd created a design and couldn't figure out how to
verify the damn thing worked. Being able to do a quick "make -j8 test" on a
proper computer definitely beats having to fire up Windows and then swear at
the sluggish and inscrutable Quartus II.
(GHDL will even ships with the upcoming Debian "jessie?!)
I use it on my Mac, which required building it. More precisely, I think the i386 build
was available but not a 64 bit build, and I wanted one. That requires getting the GNU Ada
compiler (GNAT) up first, because GHDL is written in Ada.
GHDL doesn?t have a GUI, but it can write waveform files that can be viewed with viewers
such as gtkwave.
One benefit from the fact it?s a GCC front end is that you can link in code in other
languages. For example, you can write custom test harness code in C or any other
convenient programming language; the VHDL signals are visible to C code so you can feed
inputs and look at outputs easily.
I found an excellent VHDL textbook:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0120887851/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=U…
paul