VHDL Design Representation and Synthesis (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book for Electronic Engineer
Review: For the new beginner or senior engineer in electronic field, learn this new knowlegde is essential.

Rating:
Summary: A complete treatment
Review: This is a good book to get if you want to know what is involved with designing chips today using VHDL. It starts slowly, first establishing a taxonomy for the design process and very carefully defining its terms, then picks up as it moves into more depth. Combined with a good book dedicated to synthesis and a VHDL language reference (I recommend Chang for the former, Ashenden for the latter) you can come away with a very good understanding of VHDL and its uses.

Things that would have made it better are appendices with the NUMERIC_STD libraries and STD_LOGIC libraries detailed. A bit more depth in the synthesis area and some answers to at least some of the chapter questions in the back. Thus if you are teaching yourself VHDL as I am you will need to talk to a VHDL expert to verify your understanding.

With all that being said, I have no reservations recommending this book. You can probably skip chapters 1 & 2 if you are not a beginner and jump in at chapter 3. The use of comercially available FPGA design boards was a plus as well since I could "follow along" with the examples. Now if I could only find the student guide/lab book ...