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I'm an Electrical Engineering student and I'm studying the hardware description language known as VHDL. I searched for it on Google looking for an IDE (I'm on a mac), but this language seems pretty dead. So here is my question: in my future job as an electrical engineer will VHDL be useful to me? Are you using it? UPDATE: Thank you everyone for the answers, I was clearly wrong with my first impression. |
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I use ONLY VHDL. It is far from dead. A couple of years ago it seemed like a 50/50 split between people using VHDL or Verilog (anecdotal evidence at best), but I doubt that it has changed much since then. The most recent version of VHDL is "VHDL-2008", which in language standard terms was just yesterday. |
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If you plan on working with programmable logic (e.g. FPGAs, not MCUs), VHDL and Verilog are the two languages you'll have to know. As a student, you'll probably have to learn both, use both and be examined in both. That was certainly the case for me (and I only took a few courses in ASIC design), though it was a long time ago. Chances are either VHDL or Verilog will be preferable to you. I have a personal preference for Verilog, but knowing both helps. As a future engineer, you can roughly double the chances of getting a good job in designing with FPGAs (and similar technologies) if you can use both Verilog and VHDL. You should try to make the choice as irrelevant (to you) as you can, personal preferences aside. A language is just a means of attaining a goal, not an end in itself. Consider yourself lucky there are only two big HDLs out there. If you were a computer scientist, you'd have to learn a good dozen entirely different families of programming languages, and be able to learn a new one in hours, and understand its idiom in days. Aside: programming languages (used to control the operation of Turing Machines) and hardware description languages (used to control the configuration of hardware) are different things altogether, although most HDLs have structures that either make them look like programming languages, or make them programming languages also. If this is confusing, just accept that you can't write a computer operating system in VHDL, same as you can't describe a RISC CPU in C. |
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VHDL is very much not a dead language. Your problem is that you were searching for tools to do VHDL programming on Mac OS X. Unfortunately, there are very few options for doing decent HDL (Verilog or VHDL) programming from a Mac. The only real option I know of (where real is quite a flexible adjective) is the Icarus Verilog Simulator. The other real option, and the one I choose, is to Boot Camp your Mac and pick up Windows or Linux based tools that way. |
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Yes, I use VHDL on a daily basis. And C++, C, Matlab, Python. Less frequently I also use TCL, Perl, Makefiles, Bash-scripts, and even CMD scripts (aagh!) |
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VHDL is definately not dead. It competes with the language Verilog (or more accurately, with Verilog's Sucessor, SystemVerilog). My understanding is that for whatever reason historically VHDL was the more common language for FPGA design, and the reverse for ASIC design. The languages are syntaticly rather different, but semenatically similar enough that for design purposes they are almost interchangable. As such it mostly depends on the organization as to which is used. Now compared to programming languages (VHDL and Verilog are HDLs (Hardware Description Langauges), not programming languages) there are not many worthwhile free tools. The best tools are generally expensive commerical products (although they often offer free academic licenses). |
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I will echo the other answers in saying VHDL is far from dead. It is one of two languages you may choose from to design an FPGA from. As stated in other answers, Verilog is your only other choice. Thusfar I have only worked in places that use VHDL (it seems to be regional, which language will be used). If you want tools to design in either, I would suggest picking up either Xilinx's XST suite or Altera's Quartus suite. If you wish to get a good gauge on whether VHDL is alive, try searching some job-hunting sites like dice.com, monster.com, or indeed.com for vhdl. You'll find its a little more of a niche that standard C/C++ programming, but very desirable. |
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I've used VHDL at Intel and Qualcomm, as well as at various defense industry companies and at startups. Qualcomm's MSM chips that go in cell phones are written in VHDL. I agree with the other posters that it seems to be regional, though. |
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