The System Designer's Guide to VHDL-AMS (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Systems on Silicon)
The demand is exploding for complete, integrated systems that sense, process, manipulate, and control complex entities such as sound, images, text, motion, and environmental conditions. These systems, from hand-held devices to automotive sub-systems to aerospace vehicles, employ electronics to manage and adapt to a world that is, predominantly, neither digital nor electronic.
To respond to this design challenge, the industry has developed and standardized VHDL-AMS, a unified design language for modeling digital, analog, mixed-signal, and mixed-technology systems. VHDL-AMS extends VHDL to bring the successful HDL modeling methodology of digital electronic systems design to these new design disciplines.
Gregory Peterson and Darrell Teegarden join best-selling author Peter Ashenden in teaching designers how to use VHDL-AMS to model these complex systems. This comprehensive tutorial and reference provides detailed descriptions of both the syntax and semantics of the language and of successful modeling techniques. It assumes no previous knowledge of VHDL, but instead teaches VHDL and VHDL-AMS in an integrated fashion, just as it would be used by designers of these complex, integrated systems.
* Explores the design of an electric-powered, unmanned aerial vehicle system (UAV) in five separate case studies to illustrate mixed-signal, mixed-technology, power systems, communication systems, and full system modeling.
* Includes a CD-ROM with code for all the examples and case studies in the book, an educational model library, a quick reference guide for VHDL-AMS, a syntax reference from Appendix E in the book, links to VHDL-AMS resources and Mentor Graphics SystemVision software, which provides a simulation and modeling environment with a schematic entry tool, a VHDL-AMS simulator, and a waveform viewing facility.
Why Read This Book
You should read this book if you need a practical, example-driven introduction to modeling analog, digital and mixed-technology systems using VHDL-AMS. It shows how to apply VHDL's HDL methodology to continuous-time and multi-domain problems, with patterns and examples you can reuse in real mixed-signal verification and system modeling work.
Who Will Benefit
Engineers and system designers who already know digital VHDL (or digital design) and need to model, simulate, or verify mixed-signal and multi-domain systems using VHDL-AMS.
Level: Intermediate — Prerequisites: Working knowledge of VHDL (or digital HDL concepts), basic analog circuit concepts (voltages, currents, passive components), and familiarity with simulation workflows; calculus/ODE basics help but are not required.
Key Takeaways
- Model analog and continuous-time behavior using VHDL-AMS language constructs (quantities, across/through, nature, terminal).
- Compose mixed-signal systems by combining structural and behavioral VHDL-AMS models for electrical, mechanical and thermal domains.
- Write testbenches and set up mixed-signal simulations and co-simulation with common AMS simulators.
- Apply modeling best practices to ensure numerical stability and solver-friendly descriptions.
- Use VHDL-AMS libraries and language features to build reusable multi-domain component models.
- Interpret simulation results and debug mixed-signal interactions between analog and digital domains.
Topics Covered
- 1. Introduction to VHDL-AMS and the mixed-signal design problem
- 2. Overview of VHDL fundamentals (quick review)
- 3. Basic VHDL-AMS language concepts: quantities, units, and terminals
- 4. Modeling continuous-time behavior and physical domains
- 5. Electrical modeling: nature, terminal, across/through quantities
- 6. Behavioral and structural modeling styles in VHDL-AMS
- 7. Simulation semantics, solvers, and numerical issues
- 8. Mixed-signal testbenches and verification strategies
- 9. Multi-domain examples (ADC/DAC, op-amp, filters, PLLs)
- 10. Reuse, packaging, and VHDL-AMS libraries
- 11. Practical considerations: co-simulation, tools and flows
- 12. Appendices: language reference snippets and examples
Languages, Platforms & Tools
How It Compares
Covers mixed-signal modeling with VHDL-AMS in more depth than general VHDL texts (e.g., Ashenden's own 'The Designer's Guide to VHDL' for digital VHDL) and is the VHDL counterpart to Verilog-AMS/Verilog-AMS-focused resources which cover similar topics for the Verilog world.
