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Summary: Web Site Includes Lecture Slides for Teachers & Study Guide
Review: A complete set of slides that can be used in a course based on this book
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Summary: Worth its weight in . . .
Review: A really good text book is worth its weight in ....well maybe not gold but definetely more than silver. I can count on one hand the really great textbooks I have used in over 4 years of Electrical Engineer education (two others being "Fundamentals of Logic Design" by Charles H. Roth, Jr. and "Computer Systems Design and Architecture" by Vincent Heuring and Harry Jordan). Having previously taken a VHDL class, I showed up for work and quickly realized I didn't know Diddly about how to USE VHDL. I felt like an idiot. Having purchased this book, 70% of the gaps in my knowledge have been address by the end of the third chapter. What I read in the text yesterday, I use ON THE JOB today. Having made it about halfway through the text, I can easily read and understand the code of my fellow Engineers and am starting to contribute meaningful code of my own. This book is not intended to teach you Digital Logic (for that, see Logic Design by Roth (above)). It will teach you how to USE Digital Logic in Programmable Devices. By the way, where I work we have over 8000 Electrical and Computer Engineers. All Digital Hardware is designed in VHDL. If you don't think you will have to Master VHDL to become or continue as a Digital Hardware Designer, think again. The material is this book is presented in a coherent and straightforward manner. It is thorough in its discussion of material while written in easy to understand prose. Key topics are driven home by use of well-planned examples. While agressive in its presentation, it is by no means overwhelming. I recommend this text both for students and those who wish to round out their VHDL knowledge.
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Summary: I highly recommend Dr. Navabi's book - it's a keeper.
Review: Background info:
I have been an ASIC engineer since 1986. I have designed many ASICs in Verilog and VHDL. I have 7 books on VHDL including Dr. Navabi's text. Some of the VHDL books out there are more like cookbooks: too many code examples and not enough explanation. Navabi's book is NOT a cookbook. Further, it is hard to do a direct comparison to other VHDL texts. In a way it would be like comparing apples and oranges. While some VHDL texts try to explain everything about VHDL, other books like Dr. Navabi's explain the more useful parts of VHDL as being used by a digital systems or ASIC designers. While other books are mostly for RTL coders with very little testbench and system level modeling info. In my opinion, test is extremely important as well as modeling at the system level. Many books out there do not do a good job on those aspects. Most books provide very brief explanations of test benches and/or system level modeling. This book is highly useful for a digital systems design engineer or architect. This book is not only covers coding for RTL synthesis but doing the testbenches, and sytem level modeling as well. This book has a very good balance between all the main uses of the VHDL modeling langauage. Here is my overview of the chapters :
The first two chapters provides you with a history of modeling languages and the reason VHDL was created. I recommend that you read these chapters, especially if this is your first modeling language. The chapters are not long, but it provides a very good high level overview to modeling, synthesis, and test. Chapter three gets you up and running quickly by providing simple examples to give you a good introduction to behavioral and structural VHDL. Chapters 4 though 9 are heart of the VHDL aspect of the book. Chapter 4 is very important. It describes VHDL inertial and concurrent timing in great detail. In fact, I believe Dr. Navabi's book is the best available in this aspect! It is important to understand for modeling and especially testing purposes. Chapter 5 is on structural VHDL. it is a good place to start since it is the easiest to understand. Chapter 6 introduces procedures, functions, packages, generics, and configurations. I like the way this chapter is written. Other books are not as easy to read as this one. Great examples and its clearly written as is the entire book actually. Chapter 7 digs into the VHDL types, operators, and attributes. Chapter 8 covers guarding and signal resolution. It also provides a good state machine example. Once you get through Chapter 8, pat yourself on the back because you got through the hard parts of VHDL! VHDL is a harder language to learn than Verilog. But for good reason, VHDL is much more powerful and structured than Verilog in my opinion. You can code faster in Verilog, but the code is not typically as readable as VHDL. Most of the VHDL codes I have seen are much more readable. Some of the Verilog code I have seen are downright nasty looking and time consuming to interpret. Chapter 9 starts to put it (chapters 6-8) all together by more thorough examples behavioral modeling: testbenches/harnesses, arbitration/handshaking, etc. Chapters 10-11 puts it all together with some system examples : cpu, dma, system bus modeling/timing/interfacing, etc. even memory caches! These are not complicated examples but they are real world examples. All of the techniques are still begin used today. If they were more complicated examples the book would need to be much bigger. However, these are great examples that ties everything up. Once you complete chapter 11, you are well on your way! You will have accomplished something! Don't overlook Chapters 12 (advanced modeling) and the appendices (esp. App. B, the synthesis subset). This additional information puts Navabi's book above other VHDL books in my opinion. Conclusion:
It is difficult to create a VHDL book to be 'the' book for all types and levels of designers and engineers (architectural, RTL coders, testbench and verification, etc.) But, in my opinion this book comes closest. I highly recommend this book! I have many books on VHDL. This book is valuable to me as a reference and has helped me tremendously - it's a keeper! All the codes work and I only found one insignificant typo. I can not say that about any of my other VHDL books. In fact, I will probably soon be getting rid of some of my VHDL books to make space on my shelves for new books. I'll be keeping Navabi's VHDL book as a permanent reference- for sure! I recommend this book for beginners because I like the way it progresses and delivers the material: in the right order and in the right amount. I recommend this book for moer advanced people as well, I am sure that it has material that is not covered in other VHDL books. And it makes a great reference as well. P.S.
There are recent additions to VHDL that are not discussed in this book..namely VHDL-AMS, which adds analog extentions. However, it is still very young and most simulators do not support the analog extentions yet.
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Summary: VHDL
Review: I found Dr. Navabi's book "VHDL: Analysis and Modeling of Digital Systems" to be a very comprehensive study of all language aspects of VHDL. Thorough explanations supported by detailed examples covering structural, behavioral, and dataflow styles can be found in every chapter. After studying the book, I feel comfortable to design most any digital component or sub-system, including design of flip flops, adders, subtractors, multipliers, state machines, controllers, comparators, registers, memories, etc. Dr. Navabi discusses many subtle aspects of the language that are not found in most other VHDL references such as delta timing and sequential placement of transactions on signal drivers. As a professional engineer I find the book to be an invaluable reference in my digital systems design work.
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Summary: VHDL
Review: I found Dr. Navabi's book "VHDL: Analysis and Modeling of Digital Systems" to be a very comprehensive study of all language aspects of VHDL. Thorough explanations supported by detailed examples covering structural, behavioral, and dataflow styles can be found in every chapter. After studying the book, I feel comfortable to design most any digital component or sub-system, including design of flip flops, adders, subtractors, multipliers, state machines, controllers, comparators, registers, memories, etc. Dr. Navabi discusses many subtle aspects of the language that are not found in most other VHDL references such as delta timing and sequential placement of transactions on signal drivers. As a professional engineer I find the book to be an invaluable reference in my digital systems design work.
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Summary: Hard to understand
Review: I read part of this book and it is not the best there is available. It was a little difficult to understand and I wish there were more useful examples. Also, the printing looks kinda small to me.
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Summary: All a hardware engineer needs on VHDL
Review: If you know hardware design better than programming languages then this is the book for you. It starts with real circuits and shows how to translate it into VHDL. I strongly recommend this book.
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Summary: Contents: Design methodology, VHDL langauge, VHDL in use
Review: The first three chapters are on general concepts of hardware description languages and design with these languages. Top-down design methodology is presented in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 is on timing, sequential and concurrent simulation, and event scheduling. Chapters 5 through 9 present the complete VHDL language. Real hardware examples are used for the demonstration of VHDL language constructs. The last 3 chapters (10 - 12) show various ways that VHDL can be used in real design and modeling environments. Chapter 10 shows discrete design based on VHDL, and Chapter 11 shows board level component based design. Together, these chapters show a complete CPU system with memory, bus arbitration, cache, DMA and a serial interface. The last Chapter is on modeling issues in VHDL. An appendix covers a synthesizable VHDL subset, which is a good starting point for using commercial synthesis tools. Correction: This edition does not include Verilog examples.
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Summary: Analysis and Modeling of Digital Systems by Navabi
Review: The orientation of the book is more testbench than synthesis, but both subjects are well covered. The second edition has the 1993 standard stuff built-in rather than added on. I read it cover to cover and now use it as a reference. It could be a little more tightly edited but what I like is the wealth of examples and the very complete coverage of VHDL. It's an advanced book, not a tutorial.
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Summary: Well-written and easy to understand guide to learning VHDL
Review: This book is an easy read and could be used as a self-help guide for someone trying to learn VHDL on his/her own.
Examples provided in the book illustrate code cases that are both clever and insightful. They make one think about the code and comprehend it in a straightful manner.
This book is a very good buy.
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