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Altera_Forum
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12 years ago

Python and VHDL

Hi every body I have a component in VHDL and I wanna making several copy of it and creating a Mesh M*N dimensions with them, if I will define whole the signals between them its take a long time...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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11 years ago

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Very nice discussion.

I am all for HLS, and I am considering learning MyHDL.

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I missed this thread in February.

I have done a major project with MyHDL: classification using support vector machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/support_vector_machine) I had been looking to MyHDL for several years, but never got round to do more than a lazy Sunday afternoon's play-session. But this year my favourite customer actually 'required' to do this project in MyHDL. And it was great. Of course a lot of the RTL coding stays along the same lines (there is no magic silver HLS). But what impressed me most is the ease of generating self-checking testbenches. You have all the power of Python and the libraries to generate test-data and monitor the results. Making writing extensive testbenches a lot less tedious.

MyHDL produces perfect VHDL (I haven't checked the Verilog code, as I wouldn't touch that even with a bargepole) not being rubbish as claimed by Tricky.

Learning Python is about the best thing any engineer can do. Apart from MyHDL I have used Python to write an Assembler for a specialised CPU, generated pdf documentation (using pyx and psfile), and even designed some 3D objects with it (SolidPython -> OpenScad).

Now there is still a lot of room for improvement for MyHDL and the developers are working on nice futures like fixed point and interfaces. There are a few touchy points as well. MyHDL treats Verilog and VHDL code generation equally, which is a limitation e.g. in VHDL you can do double (and triple and ...) arrays which Verilog doesn't. As Dave mentions including an external IP core is also not straightforward as you to need to write a Python model for it. But you don't need to do everything in one language, do you?

So by all means, try it out.

If you need a little help or have a question, pop over to http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.myhdl

A hint: use the pydev (http://pydev.org), sigasi (http://www.sigasi.com/) and impulse (http://toem.de/index.php/projects/impulse) plugins in eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org/) and you'll 'have done 500 miles today and even never left la'