VHDL: Hardware or Software?

[Styx]

Me and a couple of hardware engineers where I work have been having this arguement with out one VHDL coder

pretty much every single problem with our drives can be tracked down to dodgy code.

Now we stand by the fact that it is software, but hte coder insists that it is more virmware since it describs hardware.


Now we have been winning in this mini-war fo rthe last 4years. However a Dr has joined and we are facing another front.

so what do you lot think?

 

[bmcculla]

When you're talking about FPGAs VHDL is certainly soft. However, you need to know a lot about hardware design when using VHDL - software style coding generally produces poor results.

Now we stand by the fact that it is software, but hte coder insists that it is more virmware since it describs hardware.

What is the difference that you are arguing about? The difference between software and firmware is vague at best.

Processors are programmable state machines. FPGAs are devices that you program state machines into. You should be able to produce the same results with both - its just a matter of speed and flexibility.

 

[samcheetah]

sincerely i dont understand what you are saying Styx. VHDL stands for VHSIC Hardware Description Language. so its basically software that "defines" your hardware. i dont know VHDL but i do know Verilog so ill give you an example of Verilog

if you write

and G1(out, in1, in2);

in verliog and then implement it on an FPGA then thats what you will get, an AND gate. and when you write

case (ABC)

    A: bla bla bla;
    B: bla bla bla;
    C: bla bla bla;
    D: bla bla bla;

endcase

and then implement it on an FPGA it will be implemented with a mux or something like that. so whatever you write in Verilog (or VHDL) it is replicated in hardware. although there are issues of code being synthesizable or not, but lets not get into that.

i dont know what type of a system your drives use so i cant say anything on that.

but i would like to say one thing. you can implement everything in hardware. and if you did try to implement everything in hardware you would need tens of boards of ICs to do one simple task. but with software you can make a single processor do numerous things.

firmware is also a sort of software that is embedded into hardware. like when you program a PIC the program in the memory is the firmware.