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VHDL or Verilog For Learning FPGAs?
FlyByPC writes "We're in the first stages of designing a course in programmable devices at the university where I work. The course will most likely be centered around various small projects implemented on an FPGA dev board, using a Xilinx Spartan3-series FPGA. I have a bit of experience working with technologies from 7400-series chips (designing using schematics) to 8-bit microcontrollers to C/C++. FPGAs, though, are new to me (although they look very interesting.) If you were an undergraduate student studying programmable devices (specifically, FPGAs), would you prefer the course be centered on VHDL, Verilog, a little of both, or something else entirely? (...Or is this an eternal, undecidable holy-war question along the lines of ATI/nVidia, AMD/Intel, Coke/Pepsi, etc...?) At this point, I've only seen a little of both languages, so I have no real preference. Any input, especially if you're using one or both in the field, would be very helpful. Thanks, and may all of your K-maps be glitch-free."
Speaking as someone who just got his first Verilog-based design working on a Nexys2 board, I can confidently say that there are two serious mistakes a n00b can make:
1) Thinking of Verilog (or any HDL) as anything like C. Yes, there are semicolons. Yes, you can write a "for" loop, if you want to synthesize a huge mess. That's about it.
2) Thinking of Verilog as a programming language at all. HDL stands for "Hardware description language," and that's what they are.
Verilog is fun stuff, but it's the hardest thing I've ever taught myself. For those who are trying, I've found the Bhasker books on synthesis to be quite useful, Pong Chu's FPGA Prototyping with Verilog Examples to be reasonably useful, and most of the others to be fairly worthless. Too many books focus on simulation at the expense of synthesis practices, IMO.
Also have just received Richard Haskell's new books on basic and advanced Verilog using the Basys and Nexys2 platforms. They look very good at first glance but I haven't yet had a lot of time to spend with either of them.
Having now read through the entirety of the comments on this story, the trend I see is that:
A) students who learned with VHDL then went on to a career with Verilog think the transition was easy and either language is fine, while
B) students who learned with Verilog then went on to a career with VHDL, while rarer, think VHDL is a harder language, and
C) students who were forced to take VHDL when it wasn't in their career plan hated it, because it was so different than a programming language.
Based on that review, I'd say teach your students VHDL. The students that learn it and do well in your course will have the easiest time in the industry, and those that hate it probably won't become good HDL designers regardless.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.