from VHDL to FPGA

Hi everyone,

I'm a student electronics and computer engineering, and I've already got quite a bit of experience with hardware design in general and with VHDL.

I was wondering if someone knows a good reference or book that explains what the VHDL compiler actually does with the code, to convert it into logic and put it into the FPGA. In other words, how is a VHDL compiler created, how does it take your code, like a behavioural approach, and litteraly draws a logic circuit out of it?

Does anyone know a good website/book/reference where to start to get this knowledge?

Thanks.

Sincerely, E. Lesser

Reply to
elesser
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It doesn't matter what the front end language is, VHDL, Verilog & others all map to the same internal representation prior to the real work of synthesis. Synthesis started with ASICs and moved later to FPGAs so some of the material will only cover ASIC.

John

Reply to
JJ

Hi,

Thanks! Any particular book that focuses on this subject that you liked?

Sincerely, E. Lesser

Reply to
elesser

Not really, most of my textbooks on synthesis are dated back to the earlier work and are really for ASIC design. Some I picked up from Microcenter when they quite selling technical books, got many for $10 instead of $70+++.

more ideas

Use amazon search engine on same strings to get idea of whats there, you don't have to buy anything or your Uni will have.

Look for peer reviewed academic papers, you should have full access to IEEE, ACM & other portals, use citeseer, google scholar. Outside Uni, access is much more limited. Millions of papers on lots of interesting research things.

Look at some of the free synthesis software that does structural or behavioural synthsis, then you could read their sources, some get mentioned here quite often.

Look for geda, & edacafe as portals, 1st 2 hits on google And google groups for same or similar to find threads on open software.

Checkout the DAC conference for company listings, papers presented, not sure if they are online.

Also dig around X,A,L websites for any technical or application notes on synthesis, doubt you will find research level EDA type material but it might help since their tools will be proprietary. Some of their employees publish quite a few papers, perhaps that why they got hired.

As has been said here before, there are no or very few books on FPGAs since they move so fast. My last technical "FPGA" book covered the 4000 I think, and nothing about synthesis.

There are a few FPGA versions of ASIC books that cover language use but nothing much added for FPGAs so no real extra value.

happing digging

John Jakson

Reply to
JJ

Hello,

You might look for a copy of "Synthesis and Optimization of Digital Circuits" by Mr. Giovanni De Micheli. I would advise previewing this text at a library before you consider buying it, though. I found it a bit abstract for my own taste.

Eric

Reply to
Eric Crabill

thanks a lot, everyone!!

Reply to
elesser

With ise or quartus you can learn about synthesis by running code examples to the RTL or Technology viewers.

-- Mike Treseler

Reply to
Mike Treseler

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