HARDWARE DESCRIPTION

LANGUAGE (HDL)

Introduction of development of digital IC technology

The following slides are adapted from “Digital

Integrated Circuits - A Design Perspective,”

2003.

J. M. Rabaey, A. Chandrakasan, B. Nikolic

3

ENIAC - The first electronic computer (1946)

10 feet tall;

1,000 square feet of floor- space;

30 tons;

More than 70,000 resistors;

10,000 capacitors;

6,000 switches;

18,000 vacuum tubes;

Requires 150 kilowatts of power;

Transistor Age

1951: Shockley develops junction transistor which can be manufactured in quantity.

1947: Bardeen and Brattain create point-contact transistor

Early Integration

Jack Kilby, working at Texas Instruments, invented a monolithic

“integrated circuit” in July 1959.

He had constructed the flip-flop shown in the patent drawing above.

Planar transistors

In mid 1959, Noyce develops the first

true IC using planar transistors,

Practice Makes Perfect

1961: TI and Fairchild introduced first logic IC’s

1963: Densities and yields improve. This circuit has four flip-flops.

Continues development

1967: Fairchild markets the first semi-custom chip.

Transistors (organized in columns) can be easily rewired

to create different circuits. Circuit has ~150 logic gates.

1968: Noyce and Moore leave Fairchild to form Intel. By 1971 Intel had

500 employees;

By 2004, 80,000 employees in 55 countries and $34.2B in sales.

Continues development

1970: Intel starts selling a 1k bit RAM.

1971: Ted Hoff at Intel designed the first microprocessor. The

4004 had 4-bit busses and a clock rate of 108 KHz. It had

2300 transistors and was built in a 10 um process.

Exponential Growth

1972: 8088 introduced.

Had 3,500 transistors supporting a byte-wide data path.

1974: Introduction of the 8080.

Had 6,000 transistors in a 6 um process.

The clock rate was 2 MHz.

Today

Many disciplines have contributed to the current state-of-the-art in VLSI Design:

•Solid State Physics

•Materials Science

•Lithography and fab

•Device modeling

•Circuit design and

layout

•Architecture design

•Algorithms

•CAD tools

To come up with chips like:

12

Pentium 4 – 0.18 um t

0.18-micron process technology

– Introduction date: November 20, 2000 (1.5, 1.4 GHz)

– Level Two cache: 256 KB Advanced Transfer Cache

– System Bus Speed: 400 MHz

– SSE2 SIMD Extensions

– Transistors: 42 Million

– Typical Use: Desktops and entry-level workstations

13

0.13-micron process technology (2.53, 2.2, 2 GHz)

»Introduction date:

January 7, 2002

»Level Two cache:

512 KB Advanced

»Transistors: 55 Million

Pentium 4

14

Pentium Pro - multichip module (MCM)

15

• IBM chip has nine processor cores

• 192 billion floating-point operations per second (192 G)

• Typical Use: multimedia

Supercomputer for Sony's PlayStation 3

Moore’s Law

In 1965, Gordon Moore noted that the

number of transistors on a chip doubled

every 18 to 24 months.

He made a prediction that semiconductor

technology will double its effectiveness every

18 months

Moore’s Law

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15

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10

9

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6

5

4

3

2

1

0

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963

1964

1965

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

LO

G2 O

F T

HE

NU

MB

ER

OF

CO

MP

ON

EN

TS

PE

R IN

TE

GR

AT

ED

FU

NC

TIO

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Source: Electronics, April 19, 1965.

Technology Directions: SIA Roadmap

Year 1999 2002 2005 2008 2011 2014

Feature size (nm) 180 130 100 70 50 35

Logic trans/cm 2 6.2M 18M 39M 84M 180M 390M

Cost/trans (mc) 1.735 .580 .255 .110 .049 .022

#pads/chip 1867 2553 3492 4776 6532 8935

Clock (MHz) 1250 2100 3500 6000 10000 16900

C hip size (mm 2 ) 340 430 520 620 750 900

Wiring levels 6 - 7 7 7 - 8 8 - 9 9 10

Power supply (V) 1.8 1.5 1.2 0.9 0.6 0.5

High - perf pow (W) 90 130 160 170 175 183

Integrated Circuits

Full-Custom

ASICs

Semi-Custom

ASICs (std cell)

User

Programmable

PLD FPGA

PAL PLA PML LUT (Look-Up Table)

MUX Gates

World of Integrated Circuits

• designs must be sent

for expensive and time

consuming fabrication

in semiconductor foundry

• bought off the shelf

and reconfigured by

designers themselves

ASIC

Application Specific

Integrated Circuit

FPGA

Field Programmable

Gate Array

• designed all the way

from behavioral description

to physical layout

• no physical layout design;

design ends with a bitstream

used to configure a device

ASIC versus FPGA

Off-the-shelf

Low development cost

Short time to market

Reconfigurability

High performance

ASICs FPGAs

Low power

Low cost in

high volumes

Which Way to Go?

What is an ASIC Chip ? • Application Specific

Integrated Circuit

• A chip that is produced to

perform a specific function

i.e. microcontroller

• Limited interconnect layers,

dedicated routing channels

• Intellectual Properties for

timing and performance.

DLLs, PLLs, DDRs, RAMs

• Fabricated System-On-Chip

ASIC Design Flow (Overview)

Source: [Brown99]

What is an FPGA Chip ? • Field Programmable Gate

Array

• A chip that can be configured

by user to implement

different digital hardware

• Configurable Logic Blocks

(CLB) and Programmable

Switch Matrices. Sea-of-

gates

• Bitstream to configure:

function of each block & the

interconnection between

logic blocks

I/O Block

I/O B

lock

I/O Block

I/O B

lock

FPGA Design Flow (Overview)

HDL SOURCE

LOGIC SYNTHESIS

TO GATES

MAPPING

PLACEMENT

ROUTING

BITSTREAM

GENERATION

AND PROGRAMMING

(UNIQUE TO FPGAs)

What is HDL?

• A type of programming language for sampling and modeling of electronic & logic circuit designs

• It can describe the circuit’s operation, design and organization

• By using CAD tools, it can be used for test and verify through simulations

• Also used to model the intended piece of device like ASICs, FPGAs CPLDs and others

• Various kinds : VHDL, Verilog HDL, AHDL etc

Why HDL?

• Software solution due to : – Limits in hardware solutions

– Increasing design complexity – Increasing cost in time and investment – Increasing knowledge requirement – Inadequacy of other existing languages

• Text-based rather than schematic design

– Easier development – faster time-to-market – synthesis and analysis – Documentation

• Programming languages such as C or Java cannot serve as HDLs (unless modified significantly).

• Programming languages are modeled after a sequential process, where operations are performed in a sequential order (order matters).

– This is amenable to the human thinking process, in which an algorithm is unfolded into a recipe or step-by-step process

– This process matches the basic operation of a hardware computing platform.

• HDLs such as VHDL (VHSIC (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit) HDL) and Verilog were developed to support the underlying characteristics of hardware

– Connections of parts

– Concurrent operations

– Concept of propagation delay and timing

These characteristics cannot be captured by traditional PLs

Programming Language (PL) vs Hardware Description Language (HDL)

A Dataflow Language

DATAFLOW CONTROLFLOW EX: C language assignment EX: VHDL signal assignment

X = A & B; X <= A and B;

X is computed out of A and

B ONLY each time this

assignment is executed

A PERMANENT link is created

between A, B, and X

X is computed out of A and B

WHENEVER A or B changes

A Dataflow Language (cont’d)

DATAFLOW CONTROLFLOW

EX: C language assignment EX: VHDL signal assignment

X = A & B;

------

X = C & D;

X <= A and B;

------

X <= C and D;

YES NO

• VHSIC Hardware Description Language – VHSIC stands for Very High Speed Integrated

Circuit

• Jointly developed in 1983 by Intermetrics, IBM & Texas Instruments

• Initially used by the US Dept. of Defense

• IEEE Standard in 1987 then enhanced and restandardized in 1993

Intro to VHDL

• Near-approach to industry

– High density electronic design

– Multidisciplinary – electronics, microelectronics, communications, instrumentations and control

• Technology related

– Reconfigurable

– Actual implementation

• System Design

– System throughput recognition

– problem solving ability

– debugging techniques

Using VHDL as UniMAP’s OBE and PBL

VHDL CAD tool in this subject

VHDL Main Features

Timing Dataflow

Structure

Behavior

VHDL Main Features

• Supports the whole design process from high to low abstraction

levels :

• System and algorithmic level

• Register Transfer Level

• Logic level

• Circuit level (to some extent)

• Suitable for specifications either in behavioral or structural domain

• Precise simulation semantics is associated with the language

definition :

• Timing simulations specified

• Output simulation is uniquely identified and independent of the

VHDL implementation

VHDL specifications are accepted by hardware synthesis tools

Case Sensitivity

• VHDL is not case sensitive

Example:

Names or labels

databus

Databus

DataBus

DATABUS

are all equivalent

Free Format

• VHDL is a “free format” language

No formatting conventions, such as spacing or indentation imposed by VHDL compilers. Space and carriage return treated the same way. Example:

if (a=b) then

or if (a=b) then

or if (a =

b) then

are all equivalent

Comments

• Comments in VHDL are indicated with

a “double dash”, i.e., “--”

Comment indicator can be placed anywhere in the line

Any text that follows in the same line is treated as

a comment

Carriage return terminates a comment

No method for commenting a block extending over a couple of lines

Examples:

-- main subcircuit

Data_in <= Data_bus; -- reading data from the input FIFO

VHDL Architectures

• Does not allow a layout description

Behavioral

Structural

Algorithmic

FSM

RTL

Gate

Layout

Abstraction Levels VHDL Architectures

How it works

How it is connected

VHDL WRITTEN FORMAT

Library / Package Declaration

Entity Declaration

Architecture Flow

Example VHDL Code • 3 sections to a piece of VHDL code

• File extension for a VHDL file is .vhd

• Name of the file is usually the entity name (nand_gate.vhd)

LIBRARY DECLARATION

ENTITY

ARCHITECTURE

LIBRARY ieee;

USE ieee.std_logic_1164.all;

ENTITY nand_gate IS

PORT(

a : IN STD_LOGIC;

b : IN STD_LOGIC;

z : OUT STD_LOGIC);

END nand_gate;

ARCHITECTURE model OF nand_gate IS

BEGIN

z <= a NAND b;

END model;

LIBRARY / PACKAGE DECLARATION

Library ieee;

Use ieee.std_logic_1164.all;

Use ieee.std_logic_signed.all;

Use ieee.std_logic_unsigned.all;

Use ieee.std_logic_arith.all;

Library work;

Use work.my_package.entity_name;

Use work.my_package.function_name;

Library Declarations

Use all definitions from the package

std_logic_1164

LIBRARY ieee;

USE ieee.std_logic_1164.all;

ENTITY nand_gate IS

PORT(

a : IN STD_LOGIC;

b : IN STD_LOGIC;

z : OUT STD_LOGIC);

END nand_gate;

ARCHITECTURE model OF nand_gate IS

BEGIN

z <= a NAND b;

END model;

Library declaration

Library Declarations - Syntax

LIBRARY library_name;

USE library_name.package_name.package_parts;

Commonly Used Libraries • ieee

– Specifies multi-level logic system including STD_LOGIC, and STD_LOGIC_VECTOR data types

• std

– Specifies pre-defined data types (BIT, BOOLEAN, INTEGER, REAL, SIGNED, UNSIGNED, etc.), arithmetic operations, basic type conversion functions, basic text i/o functions, etc.

• work

– User-created designs after compilation

Needs to be

explicitly declared

Visible by default

Design Entity

Design Entity - most basic

building block of a design.

One entity can have many different architectures.

entity declaration

architecture 1

architecture 2

architecture 3

design entity

ENTITY DECLARATION

• Specifies the input and output signals of the entity

• modes : in, out, inout, buffer

• Format :

Entity name is

port (port_name : mode data_type);

End name;

Rules for Entity Name General rules of thumb (according to VHDL-87)

1. All names should start with an alphabet character (a-z or

A-Z) 2. Use only alphabet characters (a-z or A-Z) digits (0-9) and

underscore (_) 3. Do not use any punctuation or reserved characters within

a name (!, ?, ., &, +, -, etc.) 4. Do not use two or more consecutive underscore

characters (__) within a name (e.g., Sel__A is invalid) 5. All names and labels in a given entity and architecture

must be unique

6. Cannot end with an ‘_’ underscore

7. Cannot have a blank space to separate words

Common Data Type

• Std_logic data

– bit logic

– std_logic

– std_logic_vector (b downto a) or std_logic_vector (a to b) : array of bit logic

• Signed, Unsigned

• Integer

• Boolean

• Legal values for std_logic : 0,1,Z,-,L,H,U,X,W

– Only the first 4 are used in synthesis

Port Modes: Summary The Port Mode of the interface describes the direction in which data

travels with respect to the component

– In: Data comes in this port and can only be read within the entity. It can appear

only on the right side of a signal or variable assignment.

– Out: The value of an output port can only be updated within the entity. It

cannot be read. It can only appear on the left side of a signal assignment.

– Inout: The value of a bi-directional port can be read and updated within the

entity model. It can appear on both sides of a signal assignment.

– Buffer: Used for a signal that is an output from an entity. The value of the

signal can be used inside the entity, which means that in an assignment

statement the signal can appear on the left and right sides of the <= operator

Example 1

Full Adder A

B

Cin

SUM

Cout

Entity Full_Adder is

Port ( A,B,Cin : in std_logic;

SUM, Cout : out std_logic

);

End Full_Adder;

Example 2

4 bit Full Adder

A[3..0]

Cin

SUM[3..0]

Cout

B[3..0]

Entity Full_Adder is

Port ( A,B : in std_logic_vector(3 downto 0);

Cin : in std_logic;

SUM : out std_logic_vector(3 downto 0);

Cout : out std_logic );

End Full_Adder;

ARCHITECTURE • The Internal Aspect of a Design Unit

• Can be behavioral (RTL) or structural

• Always associated with single entity

• Single entity can have multiple architectures

architecture architecture_name of entity_name is

{architecture_declarative_part}

begin

{architecture_descriptive_part}

end [architecture_name];

Behavioral vs Structural Full Adder process (a,b,cin) behavioral

begin

s <= (a xor b) xor cin;

c <= ((a xor b) and cin) or (a and b);

end process;

-- component declaration structural

component FA

port ( inA, inB, inC : in std_logic;

Sum, Carry : out std_logic );

end component;

-- component instantiation

U1 : FA port map : (a=>inA, b=>inB, c=>inC, s=>Sum, c=>Carry);

• Two architecture flavors: Behavioral & Structural

architecture TWO of MUX2 is

component MX2 -- a macro from a library

port (A, B, S:in std_logic;

Y :out std_logic);

end component;

begin

-- instantiate MX2

U1: MX2

port map(A=>AIN, B=>BIN, S=>SIN, Y=>YOUT);

end TWO;

architecture ONE of MUX2 is

begin

YOUT <= (AIN and not SIN) or (BIN and SIN);

end ONE;

Declarative part

Behavioral

Structural

Descriptive part

ARCHITECTURE DATA OBJECTS

• 3 kinds of data object :

1. Signal

2. Constant

3. Variable

• Signal is the most common form of data object used in describing the logic signals (wires) in a circuit

• The value of an individual signal is described in apostrophes

• The value of multiple signal is described in double quotes

Operators

Single Wire Versus Bus

wire

a

bus

b

1

8

SIGNAL a : STD_LOGIC;

SIGNAL b : STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(7 downto 0);

Standard Logic Vectors SIGNAL a: STD_LOGIC;

SIGNAL b: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(3 DOWNTO 0);

SIGNAL c: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(3 DOWNTO 0);

SIGNAL d: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(7 DOWNTO 0);

SIGNAL e: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(15 DOWNTO 0);

SIGNAL f: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(8 DOWNTO 0);

……….

a <= '1';

b <= "0000"; -- Binary base assumed by default

c <= B"0000"; -- Binary base explicitly specified

d <= "0110_0111"; -- You can use '_' to increase readability

e <= X"AF67"; -- Hexadecimal base

f <= O"723"; -- Octal base

Single versus Double Quote

• Use single quote to hold a single bit signal

– a <= '0', a <='Z'

• Use double quote to hold a multi-bit signal – b <= "00", b <= "11"

Priority Dataflow

position of parenthesis

RTL netlist layout

Vectors and Concatenation

SIGNAL a: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(3 DOWNTO 0);

SIGNAL b: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(3 DOWNTO 0);

SIGNAL c, d, e: STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(7 DOWNTO 0);

a <= "0000";

b <= "1111";

c <= a & b; -- c = "00001111"

d <= '0' & "0001111"; -- d <= "00001111"

e <= '0' & '0' & '0' & '0' & '1' & '1' &

'1' & '1'; -- e <= "00001111"

Exercise

1. Generate the VHDL code for a logic circuit of a Half Adder and simulate in Quartus II

2. Using the Half Adder in Question 1, generate and simulate the VHDL code for a logic circuit of a Full Adder.

3. What do you think a VHDL code representation for a 4-bit logic circuit of a 2-to-1 Multiplexer looks like? Simulate your VHDL code in Quartus II to show the dataflow operation.

Next Chapter

• VHDL Architecture writing design styles

– Concurrent Statements

– Sequential Statements

– Behavioral vs Structural