Donald E. Troxel
						February 2, 2000

These are roughly in order of applicability to 6.111
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"VHDL for Programmable Logic" by Kevin Skahill, Addison-Wesley.

I used this book for 6.195 taught in the fall of 1997.  It is a good
introduction to the Cypress Warp software.  It is oriented towards
synthesis rather than simulation.  It includes references to and
explanation of gate arrays, although Cypress, at this juncture, does
not sell gate arrays.  It deals with release4 4.3.  It does not
describe the current release 5.2.  6.111 emphasizes synthesis.  There
are a lot of typos.  It is likely out of stock.


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"A Designer's Guide to VHDL Synthesis" by Douglas E. Ott and Thomas
J. Wilderotter, Kluwer Academic Publishers.

This book is quite readable.  It has a number of tutorials at the end,
including one using the WARP software tools.


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"VHDL Made Easy" by David Pellerin and Douglas Taylor, Prentice Hall.
Quite readable, a good introduction to VHDL.


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The Student's Guide to VHDL
Peter J. Ashendon

Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc.

San Francisco, CA
ISBN 1-55860-520-7

This book has lots of information about VHDL.  I get the impression
that it is useful for those who already know how they want to design a
digital system and generally how they go about organizing their
design description in VHDL but do not know the details of VHDL.  In
other words, it is a good book to use to find out details of VHDL
constructs.  I doubt that it is a good book to start with.
It does NOT (nor does it pretend to) deal with using VHDL to design
digital systems.


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VHDL Starter's Guide
Sudhakar Yalamanchilli

Prentice Hall   
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458
ISBN 0-13-519802-X

This is quite a readable book.  It has many examples used to present
VHDL constructs.  It is mainly written with an eye to simulation
rather than to synthesis as is the focus in this subject.  The
treatment of digital design ranges from the trivial to non-existent.
To be fair, the author states that it is aimed as a companion text to
an existing text on digital design.

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"Analysis and Design of Digital Systems With VHDL" by Allen Dewey, PWS
Publishing Company.

I have not read nor skimmed this book yet.


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"The Designer's Guide to VHDL" by Peter J. Ashenden, Morgan Kauffman
ISBN 1-55860-270-4

I have not read nor skimmed this book yet.

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Digital Systems Design Using VHDL
Charles H. Roth, Jr.

PWS Publishing Company

20 Parkl Plaza, Noston, MA 02116
ISBN 0-534-95099-X


The first chapter is a good summary of aspects of digital systems.
The second chapter is a reasonable introduction to VHDL.
The book mainly treats VHDL for simulation.
The treatment of state machines is mostly from a programming viewpoint.
It has a bunch of information on testing that seems to me to be
focussed on testing an ASIC for manufacturing flaws.



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IEEE Standards
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IEEE Standard VHDL Language Reference Manual
IEEE Std 1076-1993

This defines the VHDL language.  It is in BNF form with an English
description of each construct, i.e., signals.

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IEEE Standard Multivalue Logic System for VHDL Model Interoperability
(Std_logic_1164) 
IEEE Std 1164-1993

This is primarily VHDL code which implements the Std_logic_1164.  It
consists of package declaration code as well as package body code.
It has a short "how to use section" at the end.  You should look at it
in the library (where I think it is, anyway I have a copy) before you
buy it.

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IEE Standard VHDL Synthesis Packages
IEEE Std 1076.3-1997

This includes VHDL code for Numeric_Bit and Numeric_Standard packages.
You should look at it in the library (where I think it is, anyway I
have a copy) before you buy it.

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IEEE Standards Interpretations: IEEE std 1076-1987, IEEE Standard VHDL
Language Reference Manual
IEEE Std 1076/INT-1991

This is a description of problems and proposed resolutions.
Likely, you don't want to bother reading it.

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Don Troxel