The Verilog Hardware Description Language (Verilog-HDL) has long been the most popular language for describing complex digital hardware. It started life as a prop- etary language but was donated by Cadence Design Systems to the design community to serve as the basis of an open standard. That standard was formalized in 1995 by the IEEE in standard 1364-1995. About that same time a group named Analog Verilog International formed with the intent of proposing extensions to Verilog to support analog and mixed-signal simulation. The first fruits of the labor of that group became available in 1996 when the language definition of Verilog-A was released. Verilog-A was not intended to work directly with Verilog-HDL. Rather it was a language with Similar syntax and related semantics that was intended to model analog systems and be compatible with SPICE-class circuit simulation engines. The first implementation of Verilog-A soon followed: a version from Cadence that ran on their Spectre circuit simulator. As more implementations of Verilog-A became available, the group defining the a- log and mixed-signal extensions to Verilog continued their work, releasing the defi- tion of Verilog-AMS in 2000. Verilog-AMS combines both Verilog-HDL and Verilog-A, and adds additional mixed-signal constructs, providing a hardware description language suitable for analog, digital, and mixed-signal systems. Again, Cadence was first to release an implementation of this new language, in a product named AMS Designer that combines their Verilog and Spectre simulation engines.

The Designer's Guide to Verilog-AMS presents Verilog-AMS, the new analog and mixed-signal extensions to the widely used Verilog hardware description language. It starts by describing a rigorous and proven top-down design methodology. Top-down design is widely seen as the key to being able to design very large and complex mixed-signal circuits and it is enabled by Verilog-AMS. Verilog-A and Verilog-AMS are then introduced without assuming that the reader has a background in behavioral modeling. Finally, it includes a comprehensive reference guide for the language. The Designer's Guide to Verilog-AMS is extensively cross-referenced and indexed, making it an ideal reference for both Verilog-A and Verilog-AMS. A companion website, www.designers-guide.com, provides electronic copies of all the models used in this book, a library of user-contributed models, a discussion forum, additional documents on simulation and modeling, and other useful material. The Designer's Guide to Verilog-AMS is written for analog and mixed-signal designers, particularly those designing larger and more complex circuits.

Engineering productivity in integrated circuit product design and - velopment today is limited largely by the effectiveness of the CAD tools used. For those domains of product design that are highly dependent on transistor-level circuit design and optimization, such as high-speed logic and memory, mixed-signal analog-digital int- faces, RF functions, power integrated circuits, and so forth, circuit simulation is perhaps the single most important tool. As the complexity and performance of integrated electronic systems has increased with scaling of technology feature size, the capabilities and sophistication of the underlying circuit simulation tools have correspondingly increased. The absolute size of circuits requiring transistor-level simulation has increased dramatically, creating not only problems of computing power resources but also problems of task organization, complexity management, output representation, initial condition setup, and so forth. Also, as circuits of more c- plexity and mixed types of functionality are attacked with simu- tion, the spread between time constants or event time scales within the circuit has tended to become wider, requiring new strategies in simulators to deal with large time constant spreads.

This book is structured as a step-by-step course of study along the lines of a VLSI integrated circuit design project. The entire Verilog language is presented, from the basics to everything necessary for synthesis of an entire 70,000 transistor, full-duplex serializer-deserializer, including synthesizable PLLs. The author includes everything an engineer needs for in-depth understanding of the Verilog language: Syntax, synthesis semantics, simulation and test. Complete solutions for the 27 labs are provided in the downloadable files that accompany the book. For readers with access to appropriate electronic design tools, all solutions can be developed, simulated, and synthesized as described in the book. A partial list of design topics includes design partitioning, hierarchy decomposition, safe coding styles, back annotation, wrapper modules, concurrency, race conditions, assertion-based verification, clock synchronization, and design for test. A concluding presentation of special topics includes System Verilog and Verilog-AMS.

SystemVerilog is a rich set of extensions to the IEEE 1364-2001 Verilog Hardware Description Language (Verilog HDL). These extensions address two major aspects of HDL based design. First, modeling very large designs with concise, accurate, and intuitive code. Second, writing high-level test programs to efficiently and effectively verify these large designs. This book, SystemVerilog for Design, addresses the first aspect of the SystemVerilog extensions to Verilog. Important modeling features are presented, such as two-state data types, enumerated types, user-defined types, structures, unions, and interfaces. Emphasis is placed on the proper usage of these enhancements for simulation and synthesis. A companion to this book, SystemVerilog for Verification, covers the second aspect of SystemVerilog.

The Verilog hardware description language (HDL) provides the ability to describe digital and analog systems. This ability spans the range from descriptions that express conceptual and architectural design to detailed descriptions of implementations in gates and transistors. Verilog was developed originally at Gateway Design Automation Corporation during the mid-eighties. Tools to verify designs expressed in Verilog were implemented at the same time and marketed. Now Verilog is an open standard of IEEE with the number 1364. Verilog HDL is now used universally for digital designs in ASIC, FPGA, microprocessor, DSP and many other kinds of design-centers and is supported by most of the EDA companies. The research and education that is conducted in many universities is also using Verilog. This book introduces the Verilog hardware description language and describes it in a comprehensive manner. Verilog HDL was originally developed and specified with the intent of use with a simulator. Semantics of the language had not been fully described until now. In this book, each feature of the language is described using semantic introduction, syntax and examples. Chapter 4 leads to the full semantics of the language by providing definitions of terms, and explaining data structures and algorithms. The book is written with the approach that Verilog is not only a simulation or synthesis language, or a formal method of describing design, but a complete language addressing all of these aspects. This book covers many aspects of Verilog HDL that are essential parts of any design process.