An Introduction to VHDL Using Altera’s Quartus II IDE
Dr. William M. JonesCoastal Carolina University
Numbers and Bytes Meeting20 OCT 2008
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 2
Pre-Intro
• VHDL– Very Hard Difficult Language– Jk– VHSIC Hardware Description Language
• VHSIC– Very High Speed Integrated Circuits
• Intended uses– Circuit simulation– Circuit synthesis (realization)
• FPGA’s, (C)PLDs, ASICs
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 3
Some Background
• VHDL vice Verilog• Altera and Xilinx • VHDL is a language
– But, is very different from traditional languages– In general, all statements are CONCURRENT (parallel)– Traditional is SEQUENTIAL – Typically referred to as code as opposed to a program– VHDL is not case sensitive
• PROCESS, FUNCTION, PROCEDURE – Only places were sequential behavior is seen
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 4
Basic VHDL Code Parts
• LIBRARY– Like #include <stdio.h> in C or import in JAVA– Commonly used pieces of code– 2 are generally included by default
• ENTITY– List of specifications for input and output PORTS– Kinda like function prototypes in C (provides interface)
• ARCHITECTURE– Provides a description of how the circuit should behave
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 5
LIBRARY
LIBRARY library_name;USE library_name.package_name.package_parts;
LIBRARY ieee;USE ieee.std_logic_1164.all;
LIBRARY std; -- included by defaultUSE std.standard.all;
LIBRARY work; -- included by defaultUSE work.all;
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 6
ENTITY (Modeling Interfaces) (VHDL-93)
• Entity declaration– describes the input/output ports of a module
entity reg4 isport ( d0, d1, d2, d3, en, clk : in bit;
q0, q1, q2, q3 : out bit );end entity reg4;
entity name port names port mode (direction)
port typereserved words
punctuation
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 7
PORTS – Signal Modes
• IN– Unidirectional
• OUT– Unidirectional
• INOUT– Bidirectional
• BUFFER– Used when output signal needs to be used internally
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 8
Putting Them Together
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 9
A Simple Multiplexer
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 10
MUX Implementation with Pure Logic
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 11
Synthesized Hardware (Pure Logic)
But what do you do now?
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 12
Altera DE 2 Board
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 13
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 14
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 15
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 16
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 17
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 18
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 19
MUX Implementation with WHEN/ELSE
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 20
Synthesized Hardware (WHEN/ELSE)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 21
A Simple ALU
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 22
ALU Specifications
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 23
ALU Part 1
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 24
ALU Part 2
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 25
ALU Part 3
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 26
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 27
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 28
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 29
Kickin’ It Up A Notch
Combinational v. Sequential LOGIC
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 30
Concurrent v. Sequential Code
• Code placed inside a PROCESS, FUNCTION, or PROCEDURE is executed sequentially
• Otherwise the does is executed concurrently– In parallel– Order of statements would not matter– Often called ‘dataflow’ code
• With only a few exceptions purely concurrent code will only produce ‘combinational’ circuits
• Sequential code must be employed to produce sequential logic circuits (this code can produce both in fact)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 31
A Simple Counter (Sequential Code Intro)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 32
Simple Counter Code
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 33
Synthesized Hardware (Counter)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 34
Counter (Zoom 1)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 35
Counter (Zoom 2)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 36
A Counter With A Display
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 37
Counter With Display VHDL (Part 1)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 38
Counter With Display (Part 2)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 39
Counter With Display (Part 3)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 40
Counter With Display (Part 4)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 41
Synthesized HW (Partial)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 42
Creating A Symbol File (Schematic)
© 2007, William M. Jones, et. al.
VHDL Quick Start 43
End of N&B Presentation
Have a nice day!