Dec 27, 2017 Viewed: 1583

Verilog was one of the first popular hardware description languages to be invented.History:Beginning,Verilog-95,Verilog 2001,Verilog 2005,SystemVerilog.Computer language,Tabpear,China.


Verilog History


Beginning


Verilog was one of the first popular hardware description languages to be invented.It was created by Prabhu Goel, Phil Moorby and Chi-Lai Huang and Douglas Warmke between late 1983 and early 1984. Chi-Lai Huang had earlier worked on a hardware description LALSD, a language developed by Professor S.Y.H. Su, for his PhD work. The wording for this process was "Automated Integrated Design Systems" (later renamed to Gateway Design Automation in 1985) as a hardware modeling language. Gateway Design Automation was purchased by Cadence Design Systems in 1990. Cadence now has full proprietary rights to Gateway's Verilog and the Verilog-XL, the HDL-simulator that would become the de facto standard (of Verilog logic simulators) for the next decade. Originally, Verilog was only intended to describe and allow simulation, the automated synthesis of subsets of the language to physically realizable structures (gates etc.) was developed after the language had achieved widespread usage.

Verilog is a portmanteau of the words "verification" and "logic".


Verilog-95

With the increasing success of VHDL at the time, Cadence decided to make the language available for open standardization. Cadence transferred Verilog into the public domain under the Open Verilog International (OVI) (now known as Accellera) organization. Verilog was later submitted to IEEE and became IEEE Standard 1364-1995, commonly referred to as Verilog-95.


In the same time frame Cadence initiated the creation of Verilog-A to put standards support behind its analog simulator Spectre. Verilog-A was never intended to be a standalone language and is a subset of Verilog-AMS which encompassed Verilog-95.


Verilog 2001

Extensions to Verilog-95 were submitted back to IEEE to cover the deficiencies that users had found in the original Verilog standard. These extensions became IEEE Standard 1364-2001 known as Verilog-2001.


Verilog-2001 is a significant upgrade from Verilog-95. First, it adds explicit support for (2's complement) signed nets and variables. Previously, code authors had to perform signed operations using awkward bit-level manipulations (for example, the carry-out bit of a simple 8-bit addition required an explicit description of the Boolean algebra to determine its correct value). The same function under Verilog-2001 can be more succinctly described by one of the built-in operators: +, -, /, *, >>>. A generate/endgenerate construct (similar to VHDL's generate/endgenerate) allows Verilog-2001 to control instance and statement instantiation through normal decision operators (case/if/else). Using generate/endgenerate, Verilog-2001 can instantiate an array of instances, with control over the connectivity of the individual instances. File I/O has been improved by several new system tasks. And finally, a few syntax additions were introduced to improve code readability (e.g. always, @*, named parameter override, C-style function/task/module header declaration).


Verilog-2001 is the version of Verilog supported by the majority of commercial EDA software packages.


Verilog 2005

Not to be confused with SystemVerilog, Verilog 2005 (IEEE Standard 1364-2005) consists of minor corrections, spec clarifications, and a few new language features (such as the uwire keyword).


A separate part of the Verilog standard, Verilog-AMS, attempts to integrate analog and mixed signal modeling with traditional Verilog.


SystemVerilog

The advent of hardware verification languages such as OpenVera, and Verisity's e language encouraged the development of Superlog by Co-Design Automation Inc (acquired by Synopsys). The foundations of Superlog and Vera were donated to Accellera, which later became the IEEE standard P1800-2005: SystemVerilog.


SystemVerilog is a superset of Verilog-2005, with many new features and capabilities to aid design verification and design modeling. As of 2009, the SystemVerilog and Verilog language standards were merged into SystemVerilog 2009 (IEEE Standard 1800-2009). The current version is IEEE standard 1800-2012.


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