Re: CPLDs/FPGAs toolchain

On 4/25/2016 8:24 AM, Mark McDougall wrote:
> On 25/04/2016 1:33 AM, silverdr@wfmh.org.pl wrote:
>
>> There seem to be a kind of a pattern emerging from what I read around
>> the net: people who begin or do a little / occasionally / hobbyists
>> tend to prefer Verilog as "easier", "more familiar", "more concise".
>> People who do a lot of this / do it for living seem to gravitate
>> towards VHDL.
>
> In my _personal_ observations, I'd say that it's easier to write bad 
> code in Verilog than it is in VHDL. I don't tend to see a lot of bad 
> VHDL, but I've seen some shocking Verilog, though perhaps that's 
> merely a symptom of your observation above?!?
As one of the former group of people, I would say that it's not that we 
want to write bad Verilog, we just want to want to focus on other 
things.  That said, at least I am happy to fix my bad Verilog.  I have 
alreayd learned to pass variables by name, how to use newer Verilog 
syntax to improve readability, and I am always looking for ways to improve.

>
> The two languages tend to promote slightly different styles of coding. 
> Take a simple register that may be interfaced to a micro bus, for 
> example. In VHDL, and especially in my own code, every piece of logic 
> that relates to the implementation of said register tends to be 
> encapsulated within a single process. OTOH I've seen plenty of Verilog 
> code that scatters different aspects of the implementation all 
> throughout the code, from the decode logic, the reading and the 
> writing. That's not to say you can't do either in both - it's just a 
> style that seems to permeate each language.
I know you do VHDL, but I'd be interested in how to encapsulate all of 
that in Verilog.

I typically do:

assign ce = something & something else & ...;

register reg1 (clock, reset, ce & !r_w, data_in, reg_data)

and then somewhere else:

data = (r_w & phi1 & ce ? reg_data : 8'bz);

And I agree it's all over the place, but I am not sure how one better 
organizes it.  I guess one could do:

module register (
input reset,
input clock,
input ce,
input oe,
input data_in,
output data_ram,
output data_out
);

but then you're synthesizing tri states in the module, and I understood 
that to be a no-no.


> At the end of the day, most designs comprise the same few constructs 
> over and over again; the register interfaces, some memory/lookup, and 
> the state machines. Once you're adept in coding those, a lot of the 
> time you're simply rolling more of them. Whether it's Verilog or VHDL 
> makes little difference. 

> I would agree for the most part on this, as least based on my 
> knowledge.  But, since I use registers a lot, I would love to clean 
> them up more so i did not have to do:

assign ce =...;

register reg0(...., ce & address[1:0] == 0 & phi2 & !r_w, ram0);
register reg1(...., ce & address[1:0] == 1 & phi2 & !r_w, ram1);
register reg2(...., ce & address[1:0] == 2 & phi2 & !r_w, ram2);
register reg3(...., ce & address[1:0] == 3 & phi2 & !r_w, ram3);
mux4_1 mux(address[1:0],ram0,ram1,ram2,ram3,mux_ram);

assign data = (ce & r_w & phi2,mux_ram, 8'bz);



-- 
Jim Brain
brain@jbrain.com
www.jbrain.com


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