signal assignment definition in vhdl

Variables vs. Signals in VHDL

Variables and Signals in VHDL appears to be very similar. They can both be used to hold any type of data assigned to them. The most obvious difference is that variables use the := assignment symbol whereas signals use the <= assignment symbol. However the differences are more significant than this and must be clearly understood to know when to use which one. If you need a refresher, try this page about VHDL variables .

Signals vs. Variables:

• Variables can only be used inside processes, signals can be used inside or outside processes.
• Any variable that is created in one process cannot be used in another process, signals can be used in multiple processes though they can only be assigned in a single process .
• Variables need to be defined after the keyword process but before the keyword begin . Signals are defined in the architecture before the begin statement.
• Variables are assigned using the := assignment symbol. Signals are assigned using the <= assignment symbol.
• Variables that are assigned immediately take the value of the assignment. Signals depend on if it’s combinational or sequential code to know when the signal takes the value of the assignment.

The most important thing to understand (and the largest source of confusion) is that variables immediately take the value of their assignment, whereas signals depend on if the signal is used in combinational or sequential code . In combinational code, signals immediately take the value of their assignment. In sequential code, signals are used to create flip-flops, which inherently do not immediately take the value of their assignment. They take one clock cycle. In general, I would recommend that beginners avoid using variables. They can cause a lot of confusion and often are hard to synthesize by the tools.

The example below demonstrates how signals behave differently than variables. Notice that r_Count and v_Count appear to be the same, but they actually behave very differently.

Variables can be a bit tricky to display in simulation. If you are using Modelsim, read more about how to see your variables in Modelsim’s waveform window . Look carefully at the waveform above. Do you see how o_var_done pulses every 5th clock cycle, but o_sig_done pulses every 6th clock cycle? Using signals and variables to store data generates very different behavior . Make sure you clearly understand what you code will be generating and make sure that you simulate your code to check that behaves like you want!

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VHDL Logical Operators and Signal Assignments for Combinational Logic

In this post, we discuss the VHDL logical operators, when-else statements , with-select statements and instantiation . These basic techniques allow us to model simple digital circuits.

In a previous post in this series, we looked at the way we use the VHDL entity, architecture and library keywords. These are important concepts which provide structure to our code and allow us to define the inputs and outputs of a component.

However, we can't do anything more than define inputs and outputs using this technique. In order to model digital circuits in VHDL, we need to take a closer look at the syntax of the language.

There are two main classes of digital circuit we can model in VHDL – combinational and sequential .

Combinational logic is the simplest of the two, consisting primarily of basic logic gates , such as ANDs, ORs and NOTs. When the circuit input changes, the output changes almost immediately (there is a small delay as signals propagate through the circuit).

Sequential circuits use a clock and require storage elements such as flip flops . As a result, changes in the output are synchronised to the circuit clock and are not immediate. We talk more specifically about modelling combinational logic in this post, whilst sequential logic is discussed in the next post.

Combinational Logic

The simplest elements to model in VHDL are the basic logic gates – AND, OR, NOR, NAND, NOT and XOR.

Each of these type of gates has a corresponding operator which implements their functionality. Collectively, these are known as logical operators in VHDL.

To demonstrate this concept, let us consider a simple two input AND gate such as that shown below.

The VHDL code shown below uses one of the logical operators to implement this basic circuit.

Although this code is simple, there are a couple of important concepts to consider. The first of these is the VHDL assignment operator (<=) which must be used for all signals. This is roughly equivalent to the = operator in most other programming languages.

In addition to signals, we can also define variables which we use inside of processes. In this case, we would have to use a different assignment operator (:=).

It is not important to understand variables in any detail to model combinational logic but we talk about them in the post on the VHDL process block .

The type of signal used is another important consideration. We talked about the most basic and common VHDL data types in a previous post.

As they represent some quantity or number, types such as real, time or integer are known as scalar types. We can't use the VHDL logical operators with these types and we most commonly use them with std_logic or std_logic_vectors.

Despite these considerations, this code example demonstrates how simple it is to model basic logic gates.

We can change the functionality of this circuit by replacing the AND operator with one of the other VHDL logical operators.

As an example, the VHDL code below models a three input XOR gate.

The NOT operator is slightly different to the other VHDL logical operators as it only has one input. The code snippet below shows the basic syntax for a NOT gate.

• Mixing VHDL Logical Operators

Combinational logic circuits almost always feature more than one type of gate. As a result of this, VHDL allows us to mix logical operators in order to create models of more complex circuits.

To demonstrate this concept, let’s consider a circuit featuring an AND gate and an OR gate. The circuit diagram below shows this circuit.

The code below shows the implementation of this circuit using VHDL.

This code should be easy to understand as it makes use of the logical operators we have already talked about. However, it is important to use brackets when modelling circuits with multiple logic gates, as shown in the above example. Not only does this ensure that the design works as intended, it also makes the intention of the code easier to understand.

• Reduction Functions

We can also use the logical operators on vector types in order to reduce them to a single bit. This is a useful feature as we can determine when all the bits in a vector are either 1 or 0.

We commonly do this for counters where we may want to know when the count reaches its maximum or minimum value.

The logical reduction functions were only introduced in VHDL-2008. Therefore, we can not use the logical operators to reduce vector types to a single bit when working with earlier standards.

The code snippet below shows the most common use cases for the VHDL reduction functions.

Mulitplexors in VHDL

In addition to logic gates, we often use multiplexors (mux for short) in combinational digital circuits. In VHDL, there are two different concurrent statements which we can use to model a mux.

The VHDL with select statement, also commonly referred to as selected signal assignment, is one of these constructs.

The other method we can use to concurrently model a mux is the VHDL when else statement.

In addition to this, we can also use a case statement to model a mux in VHDL . However, we talk about this in more detail in a later post as this method also requires us to have an understanding of the VHDL process block .

Let's look at the VHDL concurrent statements we can use to model a mux in more detail.

VHDL With Select Statement

When we use the with select statement in a VHDL design, we can assign different values to a signal based on the value of some other signal in our design.

The with select statement is probably the most intuitive way of modelling a mux in VHDL.

The code snippet below shows the basic syntax for the with select statement in VHDL.

When we use the VHDL with select statement, the <mux_out> field is assigned data based on the value of the <address> field.

When the <address> field is equal to <address1> then the <mux_out> signal is assigned to <a>, for example.

We use the the others clause at the end of the statement to capture instance when the address is a value other than those explicitly listed.

We can exclude the others clause if we explicitly list all of the possible input combinations.

• With Select Mux Example

Let’s consider a simple four to one multiplexer to give a practical example of the with select statement. The output Q is set to one of the four inputs (A,B, C or D) depending on the value of the addr input signal.

The circuit diagram below shows this circuit.

This circuit is simple to implement using the VHDL with select statement, as shown in the code snippet below.

VHDL When Else Statements

We use the when statement in VHDL to assign different values to a signal based on boolean expressions .

In this case, we actually write a different expression for each of the values which could be assigned to a signal. When one of these conditions evaluates as true, the signal is assigned the value associated with this condition.

The code snippet below shows the basic syntax for the VHDL when else statement.

When we use the when else statement in VHDL, the boolean expression is written after the when keyword. If this condition evaluates as true, then the <mux_out> field is assigned to the value stated before the relevant when keyword.

For example, if the <address> field in the above example is equal to <address1> then the value of <a> is assigned to <mux_out>.

When this condition evaluates as false, the next condition in the sequence is evaluated.

We use the else keyword to separate the different conditions and assignments in our code.

The final else statement captures the instances when the address is a value other than those explicitly listed. We only use this if we haven't explicitly listed all possible combinations of the <address> field.

• When Else Mux Example

Let’s consider the simple four to one multiplexer again in order to give a practical example of the when else statement in VHDL. The output Q is set to one of the four inputs (A,B, C or D) based on the value of the addr signal. This is exactly the same as the previous example we used for the with select statement.

The VHDL code shown below implements this circuit using the when else statement.

• Comparison of Mux Modelling Techniques in VHDL

When we write VHDL code, the with select and when else statements perform the same function. In addition, we will get the same synthesis results from both statements in almost all cases.

In a purely technical sense, there is no major advantage to using one over the other. The choice of which one to use is often a purely stylistic choice.

When we use the with select statement, we can only use a single signal to determine which data will get assigned.

This is in contrast to the when else statements which can also include logical descriptors.

This means we can often write more succinct VHDL code by using the when else statement. This is especially true when we need to use a logic circuit to drive the address bits.

Let's consider the circuit shown below as an example.

To model this using a using a with select statement in VHDL, we would need to write code which specifically models the AND gate.

We must then include the output of this code in the with select statement which models the multiplexer.

The code snippet below shows this implementation.

Although this code would function as needed, using a when else statement would give us more succinct code. Whilst this will have no impact on the way the device works, it is good practice to write clear code. This help to make the design more maintainable for anyone who has to modify it in the future.

The VHDL code snippet below shows the same circuit implemented with a when else statement.

Instantiating Components in VHDL

Up until this point, we have shown how we can use the VHDL language to describe the behavior of circuits.

However, we can also connect a number of previously defined VHDL entity architecture pairs in order to build a more complex circuit.

This is similar to connecting electronic components in a physical circuit.

There are two methods we can use for this in VHDL – component instantiation and direct entity instantiation .

• VHDL Component Instantiation

When using component instantiation in VHDL, we must define a component before it is used.

We can either do this before the main code, in the same way we would declare a signal, or in a separate package.

VHDL packages are similar to headers or libraries in other programming languages and we discuss these in a later post.

When writing VHDL, we declare a component using the syntax shown below. The component name and the ports must match the names in the original entity.

After declaring our component, we can instantiate it within an architecture using the syntax shown below. The <instance_name> must be unique for every instantiation within an architecture.

In VHDL, we use a port map to connect the ports of our component to signals in our architecture.

The signals which we use in our VHDL port map, such as <signal_name1> in the example above, must be declared before they can be used.

As VHDL is a strongly typed language, the signals we use in the port map must also match the type of the port they connect to.

When we write VHDL code, we may also wish to leave some ports unconnected.

For example, we may have a component which models the behaviour of a JK flip flop . However, we only need to use the inverted output in our design meaning. Therefore, we do not want to connect the non-inverted output to a signal in our architecture.

We can use the open keyword to indicate that we don't make a connection to one of the ports.

However, we can only use the open VHDL keyword for outputs.

If we attempt to leave inputs to our components open, our VHDL compiler will raise an error.

• VHDL Direct Entity Instantiation

The second instantiation technique is known as direct entity instantiation.

Using this method we can directly connect the entity in a new design without declaring a component first.

The code snippet below shows how we use direct entity instantiation in VHDL.

As with the component instantiation technique, <instance_name> must be unique for each instantiation in an architecture.

There are two extra requirements for this type of instantiation. We must explicitly state the name of both the library and the architecture which we want to use. This is shown in the example above by the <library_name> and <architecture_name> labels.

Once the component is instantiated within a VHDL architecture, we use a port map to connect signals to the ports. We use the VHDL port map in the same way for both direct entity and component instantiation.

Which types can not be used with the VHDL logical operators?

Scalar types such as integer and real.

Write the code for a 4 input NAND gate

We can use two different types of statement to model multiplexors in VHDL, what are they?

The with select statement and the when else statement

Write the code for an 8 input multiplexor using both types of statement

Write the code to instantiate a two input AND component using both direct entity and component instantiation. Assume that the AND gate is compiled in the work library and the architecture is named rtl.

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A signal assignment statement modifies the target signal

Description:

A Signal assignment statement can appear inside a process (sequential statement) or directly in an architecture (concurrent statement). The target signal can be either a name (simple, selected, indexed, or slice) or an aggregate .

A signal assignment with no delay (or zero delay) will cause an event after delta delay, which means that the event happens only when all of the currently active processes have finished executing (i.e. after one simulation cycle).

The default delay mode ( inertial ) means that pulses shorter than the delay (or the reject period if specified) are ignored. Transport means that the assignment acts as a pure delay line.

VHDL'93 defines the keyword unaffected which indicates a choice where the signal is not given a new assignment. This is roughly equivalent to the use of the null statement within case (see Examples).

• Delays are usually ignored by synthesis tool.

Aggregate , Concurrent statement , Sequential statement , Signal , Variable assignment

How a signal is different from a variable in VHDL

In the previous tutorial we learned how to declare a variable in a process. Variables are good for creating algorithms within a process, but they are not accessible to the outside world. If a scope of a variable is only within a single process, how can it interact with any other logic? The solution for this is a signal .

Signals are declared between the architecture <architecture_name> of <entity_name> is line and the begin statements in the VHDL file. This is called the declarative part of the architecture.

This blog post is part of the Basic VHDL Tutorials series.

The syntax for declaring a signal is:

A signal may optionally be declared with an initial value:

In this video tutorial we learn how to declare a signal. We will also learn the main difference between a variable and a signal:

The final code we created in this tutorial:

The output to the simulator console when we pressed the run button in ModelSim:

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We created a signal and a variable with the same initial value of 0. In our process we treated them in the exact same way, yet the printouts reveal that they behaved differently. First we saw that the assignment to a variable and a signal has a different notation in VHDL. Variable assignment uses the := operator while signal assignment uses the <= operator.

MyVariable behaves as one would expect a variable to behave. In the first iteration of the loop it is incremented to 1, and then to 2. The last printout from the first iteration shows that its value is still 2, as we would expect.

MySignal behaves slightly different. The first +1 increment doesn’t seem to have any effect. The printout reveals that its value is still 0, the initial value. The same is true after the second +1 increment. Now the value of MyVariable is 2, but the value of MySignal is still 0. After wait for 10 ns; the third printout shows that the value of MySignal is now 1. The subsequent printouts follow this pattern as well.

What is this sorcery? I will give you a clue, the wait for 10 ns; has something to do with it. Signals are only updated when a process is paused. Our process pauses only one place, at wait for 10 ns; . Therefore, the signal value changes only every time this line is hit. The 10 nanoseconds is an arbitrary value, it could be anything, even 0 nanoseconds. Try it!

Another important observation is that event though the signal was incremented twice before the wait , its value only incremented once. This is because when assigning to a signal in a process, the last assignment “wins”. The <= operator only schedules a new value onto the signal, it doesn’t change until the wait . Therefore, at the second increment of MySignal , 1 is added to its old value. When it is incremented again, the first increment is completely lost.

• A variable can be used within one process while signals have a broader scope
• Variable assignment is effective immediately while signals are updated only when a process pauses
• If a signal is assigned to several times without a wait , the last assignment “wins”

Go to the next tutorial »

I’m from Norway, but I live in Bangkok, Thailand. Before I started VHDLwhiz, I worked as an FPGA engineer in the defense industry. I earned my master’s degree in informatics at the University of Oslo.

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Chapter 4 - Behavioral Descriptions

Section 3 - signals and processes.

Introduction to Digital Systems: Modeling, Synthesis, and Simulation Using VHDL by

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4.9 VHDL SIGNAL AND GENERATE STATEMENTS

4.9.1 signal statement.

Signal is a VHDL keyword. It declares a signal of specified data type. A signal declaration is used to represent internal signals within an architecture declaration.

Figure 4.20 Logic Circuit with Internal Signals

Unlike entity ports, internal signals do not have a direction. Signal assignment statements execute only when the associated signals (appearing on the right-hand side of the assignment statement) change values. In VHDL, the order of concurrent statements in VHDL code does not affect the order in which the statements are executed. Signal assignments are concurrent and could execute in parallel fashion. Consider the logic circuit in Figure 4.20 where the internal signals are identified. Notice, that from the point of view of an entity declaration, the signals Sig 1 , Sig 2 , and Sig 3 are internal signals. They are neither input ports nor output ports, and therefore do not have a direction.

The VHDL program in Figure 4.21 implements the logic circuit in Figure 4.20 . The entity declaration is similar to that in the VHDL program of Figure 4.6 . The architecture declaration has been modified to include the internal signals. The logic function of the circuit is described in an indirect way using the internal signals. Both VHDL implementations ( Figures 4.6 and 4.21 ) have the same logic function and should yield the same ...

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Signal Assignments in VHDL: with/select, when/else and case

Sometimes, there is more than one way to do something in VHDL. OK, most of the time , you can do things in many ways in VHDL. Let’s look at the situation where you want to assign different values to a signal, based on the value of another signal.

With / Select

The most specific way to do this is with as selected signal assignment. Based on several possible values of a , you assign a value to b . No redundancy in the code here. The official name for this VHDL with/select assignment is the selected signal assignment .

When / Else Assignment

The construct of a conditional signal assignment is a little more general. For each option, you have to give a condition. This means that you could write any boolean expression as a condition, which give you more freedom than equality checking. While this construct would give you more freedom, there is a bit more redundancy too. We had to write the equality check ( a = ) on every line. If you use a signal with a long name, this will make your code bulkier. Also, the separator that’s used in the selected signal assignment was a comma. In the conditional signal assignment, you need the else keyword. More code for the same functionality. Official name for this VHDL when/else assignment is the conditional signal assignment

Combinational Process with Case Statement

The most generally usable construct is a process. Inside this process, you can write a case statement, or a cascade of if statements. There is even more redundancy here. You the skeleton code for a process (begin, end) and the sensitivity list. That’s not a big effort, but while I was drafting this, I had put b in the sensitivity list instead of a . Easy to make a small misstake. You also need to specify what happens in the other cases. Of course, you could do the same thing with a bunch of IF-statements, either consecutive or nested, but a case statement looks so much nicer.

While this last code snippet is the largest and perhaps most error-prone, it is probably also the most common. It uses two familiar and often-used constructs: the process and the case statements.

Hard to remember

The problem with the selected and conditional signal assignments is that there is no logic in their syntax. The meaning is almost identical, but the syntax is just different enough to throw you off. I know many engineers who permanenty have a copy of the Doulos Golden Reference Guide to VHDL lying on their desks. Which is good for Doulos, because their name gets mentioned all the time. But most people just memorize one way of getting the job done and stick with it.

• VHDL Pragmas (blog post)
• Records in VHDL: Initialization and Constraining unconstrained fields (blog post)
• Finite State Machine (FSM) encoding in VHDL: binary, one-hot, and others (blog post)
• "Use" and "Library" in VHDL (blog post)
• The scope of VHDL use clauses and VHDL library clauses (blog post)

• Getting started with vhdl
• D-Flip-Flops (DFF) and latches
• Digital hardware design using VHDL in a nutshell
• Identifiers
• Protected types
• Recursivity
• Resolution functions, unresolved and resolved types
• Static Timing Analysis - what does it mean when a design fails timing?

vhdl Getting started with vhdl Signals vs. variables, a brief overview of the simulation semantics of VHDL

Fastest entity framework extensions.

This example deals with one of the most fundamental aspects of the VHDL language: the simulation semantics. It is intended for VHDL beginners and presents a simplified view where many details have been omitted (postponed processes, VHDL Procedural Interface, shared variables...) Readers interested in the real complete semantics shall refer to the Language Reference Manual (LRM).

Signals and variables

Most classical imperative programming languages use variables. They are value containers. An assignment operator is used to store a value in a variable:

and the value currently stored in a variable can be read and used in other statements:

VHDL also uses variables and they have exactly the same role as in most imperative languages. But VHDL also offers another kind of value container: the signal. Signals also store values, can also be assigned and read. The type of values that can be stored in signals is (almost) the same as in variables.

So, why having two kinds of value containers? The answer to this question is essential and at the heart of the language. Understanding the difference between variables and signals is the very first thing to do before trying to program anything in VHDL.

Let us illustrate this difference on a concrete example: the swapping.

Note: all the following code snippets are parts of processes. We will see later what processes are.

swaps variables a and b . After executing these 3 instructions, the new content of a is the old content of b and conversely. Like in most programming languages, a third temporary variable ( tmp ) is needed. If, instead of variables, we wanted to swap signals, we would write:

with the same result and without the need of a third temporary signal!

Note: the VHDL signal assignment operator <= is different from the variable assignment operator := .

Let us look at a second example in which we assume that the print subprogram prints the decimal representation of its parameter. If a is an integer variable and its current value is 15, executing:

will print:

If we execute this step by step in a debugger we can see the value of a changing from the initial 15 to 30, 25 and finally 5.

But if s is an integer signal and its current value is 15, executing:

If we execute this step by step in a debugger we will not see any value change of s until after the wait instruction. Moreover, the final value of s will not be 15, 30, 25 or 5 but 3!

This apparently strange behavior is due the fundamentally parallel nature of digital hardware, as we will see in the following sections.

Parallelism

VHDL being a Hardware Description Language (HDL), it is parallel by nature. A VHDL program is a collection of sequential programs that run in parallel. These sequential programs are called processes:

The processes, just like the hardware they are modelling, never end: they are infinite loops. After executing the last instruction, the execution continues with the first.

As with any programming language that supports one form or another of parallelism, a scheduler is responsible for deciding which process to execute (and when) during a VHDL simulation. Moreover, the language offers specific constructs for inter-process communication and synchronization.

The scheduler maintains a list of all processes and, for each of them, records its current state which can be running , run-able or suspended . There is at most one process in running state: the one that is currently executed. As long as the currently running process does not execute a wait instruction, it continues running and prevents any other process from being executed. The VHDL scheduler is not preemptive: it is each process responsibility to suspend itself and let other processes run. This is one of the problems that VHDL beginners frequently encounter: the free running process.

Note: variable a is declared locally while signals s and r are declared elsewhere, at a higher level. VHDL variables are local to the process that declares them and cannot be seen by other processes. Another process could also declare a variable named a , it would not be the same variable as the one of process P3 .

As soon as the scheduler will resume the P3 process, the simulation will get stuck, the simulation current time will not progress anymore and the only way to stop this will be to kill or interrupt the simulation. The reason is that P3 has not wait statement and will thus stay in running state forever, looping over its 3 instructions. No other process will ever be given a chance to run, even if it is run-able .

Even processes containing a wait statement can cause the same problem:

Note: the VHDL equality operator is = .

If process P4 is resumed while the value of signal s is 3, it will run forever because the a = 16 condition will never be true.

Let us assume that our VHDL program does not contain such pathological processes. When the running process executes a wait instruction, it is immediately suspended and the scheduler puts it in the suspended state. The wait instruction also carries the condition for the process to become run-able again. Example:

means suspend me until the value of signal s changes . This condition is recorded by the scheduler. The scheduler then selects another process among the run-able , puts it in running state and executes it. And the same repeats until all run-able processes have been executed and suspended.

Important note: when several processes are run-able , the VHDL standard does not specify how the scheduler shall select which one to run. A consequence is that, depending on the simulator, the simulator's version, the operating system, or anything else, two simulations of the same VHDL model could, at one point, make different choices and select a different process to execute. If this choice had an impact on the simulation results, we could say that VHDL is non-deterministic. As non-determinism is usually undesirable, it would be the responsibility of the programmers to avoid non-deterministic situations. Fortunately, VHDL takes care of this and this is where signals enter the picture.

Signals and inter-process communication

VHDL avoids non determinism using two specific characteristics:

• Processes can exchange information only through signals

Note: VHDL comments extend from -- to the end of the line.

• The value of a VHDL signal does not change during the execution of processes

Every time a signal is assigned, the assigned value is recorded by the scheduler but the current value of the signal remains unchanged. This is another major difference with variables that take their new value immediately after being assigned.

Let us look at an execution of process P5 above and assume that a=5 , s=1 and r=0 when it is resumed by the scheduler. After executing instruction a := s + 1; , the value of variable a changes and becomes 2 (1+1). When executing the next instruction r <= a; it is the new value of a (2) that is assigned to r . But r being a signal, the current value of r is still 0. So, when executing a := r + 1; , variable a takes (immediately) value 1 (0+1), not 3 (2+1) as the intuition would say.

When will signal r really take its new value? When the scheduler will have executed all run-able processes and they will all be suspended. This is also referred to as: after one delta cycle . It is only then that the scheduler will look at all the values that have been assigned to signals and actually update the values of the signals. A VHDL simulation is an alternation of execution phases and signal update phases. During execution phases, the value of the signals is frozen. Symbolically, we say that between an execution phase and the following signal update phase a delta of time elapsed. This is not real time. A delta cycle has no physical duration.

Thanks to this delayed signal update mechanism, VHDL is deterministic. Processes can communicate only with signals and signals do not change during the execution of the processes. So, the order of execution of the processes does not matter: their external environment (the signals) does not change during the execution. Let us show this on the previous example with processes P5 and P6 , where the initial state is P5.a=5 , P6.a=10 , s=17 , r=0 and where the scheduler decides to run P5 first and P6 next. The following table shows the value of the two variables, the current and next values of the signals after executing each instruction of each process:

With the same initial conditions, if the scheduler decides to run P6 first and P5 next:

As we can see, after the execution of our two processes, the result is the same whatever the order of execution.

This counter-intuitive signal assignment semantics is the reason of a second type of problems that VHDL beginners frequently encounter: the assignment that apparently does not work because it is delayed by one delta cycle. When running process P5 step-by-step in a debugger, after r has been assigned 18 and a has been assigned r + 1 , one could expect that the value of a is 19 but the debugger obstinately says that r=0 and a=1 ...

Note: the same signal can be assigned several times during the same execution phase. In this case, it is the last assignment that decides the next value of the signal. The other assignments have no effect at all, just like if they never had been executed.

It is time to check our understanding: please go back to our very first swapping example and try to understand why:

actually swaps signals r and s without the need of a third temporary signal and why:

would be strictly equivalent. Try to understand also why, if s is an integer signal and its current value is 15, and we execute:

the two first assignments of signal s have no effect, why s is finally assigned 3 and why the two printed values are 15 and 3.

Physical time

In order to model hardware it is very useful to be able to model the physical time taken by some operation. Here is an example of how this can be done in VHDL. The example models a synchronous counter and it is a full, self-contained, VHDL code that could be compiled and simulated:

In process P1 the wait instruction is not used to wait until the value of a signal changes, like we saw up to now, but to wait for a given duration. This process models a clock generator. Signal clk is the clock of our system, it is periodic with period 20 ns (50 MHz) and has duty cycle.

Process P2 models a register that, if a rising edge of clk just occurred, assigns the value of its input nc to its output c and then waits for the next value change of clk .

Process P3 models an incrementer that assigns the value of its input c , incremented by one, to its output nc ... with a physical delay of 5 ns. It then waits until the value of its input c changes. This is also new. Up to now we always assigned signals with:

which, for the reasons explained in the previous sections, we can implicitly translate into:

This small digital hardware system could be represented by the following figure:

With the introduction of the physical time, and knowing that we also have a symbolic time measured in delta , we now have a two dimensional time that we will denote T+D where T is a physical time measured in nano-seconds and D a number of deltas (with no physical duration).

The complete picture

There is one important aspect of the VHDL simulation that we did not discuss yet: after an execution phase all processes are in suspended state. We informally stated that the scheduler then updates the values of the signals that have been assigned. But, in our example of a synchronous counter, shall it update signals clk , c and nc at the same time? What about the physical delays? And what happens next with all processes in suspended state and none in run-able state?

The complete (but simplified) simulation algorithm is the following:

• Set current time Tc to 0+0 (0 ns, 0 delta-cycle)
• Initialize all signals.
• Record the values and delays of signal assignments.
• Record the conditions for the process to resume (delay or signal change).
• The resume time of processes suspended by a wait for <delay> .
• The next time at which a signal value shall change.
• Update signals that need to be.
• Put in run-able state all processes that were waiting for a value change of one of the signals that has been updated.
• Put in run-able state all processes that were suspended by a wait for <delay> statement and for which the resume time is Tc .
• If Tn is infinity, stop simulation. Else, start a new simulation cycle.

Manual simulation

To conclude, let us now manually exercise the simplified simulation algorithm on the synchronous counter presented above. We arbitrary decide that, when several processes are run-able, the order will be P3 > P2 > P1 . The following tables represent the evolution of the state of the system during the initialization and the first simulation cycles. Each signal has its own column in which the current value is indicated. When a signal assignment is executed, the scheduled value is appended to the current value, e.g. a/b@T+D if the current value is a and the next value will be b at time T+D (physical time plus delta cycles). The 3 last columns indicate the condition to resume the suspended processes (name of signals that must change or time at which the process shall resume).

Initialization phase:

Simulation cycle #1.

Note: during the first simulation cycle there is no execution phase because none of our 3 processes has its resume condition satisfied. P2 is waiting for a value change of clk and there has been a transaction on clk , but as the old and new values are the same, this is not a value change .

Simulation cycle #2

Note: again, there is no execution phase. nc changed but no process is waiting on nc .

Simulation cycle #3

Simulation cycle #4, simulation cycle #5.

Note: one could think that the nc update would be scheduled at 15+2 , while we scheduled it at 15+0 . When adding a non-zero physical delay (here 5 ns ) to a current time ( 10+2 ), the delta cycles vanish. Indeed, delta cycles are useful only to distinguish different simulation times T+0 , T+1 ... with the same physical time T . As soon as the physical time changes, the delta cycles can be reset.

Simulation cycle #6

Simulation cycle #7, simulation cycle #8, simulation cycle #9, simulation cycle #10, simulation cycle #11, got any vhdl question.

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