Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits at the register-transfer level of abstraction. It is also used in the verification of analog circuits and mixed-signal circuits, as well as in the design of genetic circuits. In 2009, the Verilog standard was merged into the SystemVerilog standard, creating IEEE Standard 1800-2009. Since then, Verilog is officially part of the SystemVerilog language. The current version is IEEE standard 1800-2017.
In computer engineering, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure and behavior of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits.
Software development is the process of conceiving, specifying, designing, programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications, frameworks, or other software components. Software development is a process of writing and maintaining the source code, but in a broader sense, it includes all that is involved between the conception of the desired software through to the final manifestation of the software, sometimes in a planned and structured process. Therefore, software development may include research, new development, prototyping, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products.
Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera) is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation (EDA) and integrated circuit (IC) design and manufacturing. It is less constrained than the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and is therefore the starting place for many standards. Once mature and adopted by the broader community, the standards are usually transferred to the IEEE.
SystemC is a set of C++ classes and macros which provide an event-driven simulation interface. These facilities enable a designer to simulate concurrent processes, each described using plain C++ syntax. SystemC processes can communicate in a simulated real-time environment, using signals of all the datatypes offered by C++, some additional ones offered by the SystemC library, as well as user defined. In certain respects, SystemC deliberately mimics the hardware description languages VHDL and Verilog, but is more aptly described as a system-level modeling language.
Architecture description languages (ADLs) are used in several disciplines: system engineering, software engineering, and enterprise modelling and engineering.
SystemVerilog, standardized as IEEE 1800, is a hardware description and hardware verification language used to model, design, simulate, test and implement electronic systems. SystemVerilog is based on Verilog and some extensions, and since 2008 Verilog is now part of the same IEEE standard. It is commonly used in the semiconductor and electronic design industry as an evolution of Verilog.
Electronic system level (ESL) design and verification is an electronic design methodology, focused on higher abstraction level concerns. The term Electronic System Level or ESL Design was first defined by Gartner Dataquest, an EDA-industry-analysis firm, on February 1, 2001. It is defined in ESL Design and Verification as: "the utilization of appropriate abstractions in order to increase comprehension about a system, and to enhance the probability of a successful implementation of functionality in a cost-effective manner."
C to HDL tools convert C language or C-like computer code into a hardware description language (HDL) such as VHDL or Verilog. The converted code can then be synthesized and translated into a hardware device such as a field-programmable gate array. Compared to software, equivalent designs in hardware consume less power and execute faster with lower latency, more parallelism and higher throughput. However, system design and functional verification in a hardware description language can be tedious and time-consuming, so systems engineers often write critical modules in HDL and other modules in a high-level language and synthesize these into HDL through C to HDL or high-level synthesis tools.
Flow to HDL tools and methods convert flow-based system design into a hardware description language (HDL) such as VHDL or Verilog. Typically this is a method of creating designs for field-programmable gate array, application-specific integrated circuit prototyping and digital signal processing (DSP) design. Flow-based system design is well-suited to field-programmable gate array design as it is easier to specify the innate parallelism of the architecture.
Aldec, Inc. is a privately owned electronic design automation company based in Henderson, Nevada that provides software and hardware used in creation and verification of digital designs targeting FPGA and ASIC technologies.
The Rosetta system-level specification language is a design language for complex, heterogeneous systems. Specific language design objectives include:
SystemVerilog DPI is an interface which can be used to interface SystemVerilog with foreign languages. These foreign languages can be C, C++, SystemC as well as others. DPIs consist of two layers: a SystemVerilog layer and a foreign language layer. Both the layers are isolated from each other. Which programming language is actually used as the foreign language is transparent and irrelevant for the System-Verilog side of this interface. Neither the SystemVerilog compiler nor the foreign language compiler is required to analyze the source code in the other’s language. Different programming languages can be used and supported with the same intact SystemVerilog layer. For now, however, SystemVerilog defines a foreign language layer only for the C programming language.
ModelSim is a multi-language environment by Mentor Graphics, for simulation of hardware description languages such as VHDL, Verilog and SystemC, and includes a built-in C debugger. ModelSim can be used independently, or in conjunction with Intel Quartus Prime, Xilinx ISE or Xilinx Vivado. Simulation is performed using the graphical user interface (GUI), or automatically using scripts.
High-level synthesis (HLS), sometimes referred to as C synthesis, electronic system-level (ESL) synthesis, algorithmic synthesis, or behavioral synthesis, is an automated design process that interprets an algorithmic description of a desired behavior and creates digital hardware that implements that behavior.
Intelligent Verification, including intelligent testbench automation, is a form of functional verification of electronic hardware designs used to verify that a design conforms to specification before device fabrication. Intelligent verification uses information derived from the design and specification(s) to expose bugs in and between hardware IPs. Intelligent verification tools require considerably less engineering effort and user guidance to achieve verification results that meet or exceed the standard approach of writing a testbench program.
Catapult C Synthesis, a commercial electronic design automation product of Mentor Graphics, is a high-level synthesis tool, sometimes called algorithmic synthesis or ESL synthesis. Catapult C takes ANSI C/C++ and SystemC inputs and generates register transfer level (RTL) code targeted to FPGAs and ASICs.
Daniel Gajski is a Professor of the School of Information and Computer Science and the School of Engineering at University of California, Irvine, United States. He was previously the Director for the Center for Embedded Computer Systems (CECS), now known as the Center for Embedded and Cyber-physical Systems.
OpenComRTOS is a commercial network-centric, formally developed real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market.
PragmaDev Studio is a modeling and testing software tool introduced by PragmaDev in 2002 dedicated to the specification of communicating systems. It was initially called Real Time Developer Studio or RTDS. Its primary objective was to support SDL-RT modeling technology. Since V5.0 launched on October 7, 2015 RTDS is called PragmaDev Studio, and it is organized in four independent modules: Specifier, Developer, Tester and Tracer. V5.1 launched on November 29, 2016 introduces a freemium licensing model.
