courses:system_design:project_management:file_organisation

File Organisation

Overview

  • Primary and secondary design units can be split into several files
  • Advantages of
    • Several Packages
      • Modularisation and reuse aspects (IEEE, corporate, project packages)
      • Separation of synthesizable from simulation only VHDL
    • Package / Package body Separation
      • No recompilation of the design hierarchy
 if body (implementation) changed
    • Entity / Architecture Separation
      • System design (top level, structural) independent from implementation
      • Several modelling alternatives (e.g. behavioral, RTL) possible
    • Several top level configurations
      • Adjust design to goal of simulation
      • Comparison of alternative architectures

Notes

VHDL offers several possibilities of implementing hierarchy.

The language introduces the main hierarchy into the design with the philosophy of entity/architecture pairs and their instantiation as components. This leads to a strict separation of interface and implementation.

With the help of packages, libraries and concise naming conventions it is possible to manage huge designs with a plenty of files. Switching between the different implementations during simulation is done with the configuration mechanism.

Chapters of System Design > Project Management