Node:A full adder, Next:Starting with a design, Previous:The hello word program, Up:Starting with GHDL
VHDL is generally used for hardware design. This example starts with a full adder described in the adder.vhdl
file:
entity adder is -- i0, i1 and the carry-in ci are inputs of the adder. -- s is the sum output, co is the carry-out. port (i0, i1 : in bit; ci : in bit; s : out bit; co : out bit); end adder; architecture rtl of adder is begin -- This full-adder architecture contains two concurrent assignment. -- Compute the sum. s <= i0 xor i1 xor ci; -- Compute the carry. co <= (i0 and i1) or (i0 and ci) or (i1 and ci); end rtl;
You can analyze this design file:
$ ghdl -a adder.vhdl
You can try to execute the adder
design, but this is useless, since nothing externally visible will happen. In order to check this full adder, a testbench has to be run. This testbench is very simple, since the adder is also simple: it checks exhaustively all inputs. Note that only the behaviour is tested, timing constraints are not checked. The file adder_tb.vhdl
contains the testbench for the adder:
-- A testbench has no ports. entity adder_tb is end adder_tb; architecture behav of adder_tb is -- Declaration of the component that will be instantiated. component adder port (i0, i1 : in bit; ci : in bit; s : out bit; co : out bit); end component; -- Specifies which entity is bound with the component. for adder_0: adder use entity work.adder; signal i0, i1, ci, s, co : bit; begin -- Component instantiation. adder_0: adder port map (i0 => i0, i1 => i1, ci => ci, s => s, co => co); -- This process does the real job. process type pattern_type is record -- The inputs of the adder. i0, i1, ci : bit; -- The expected outputs of the adder. s, co : bit; end record; -- The patterns to apply. type pattern_array is array (natural range <>) of pattern_type; constant patterns : pattern_array := (('0', '0', '0', '0', '0'), ('0', '0', '1', '1', '0'), ('0', '1', '0', '1', '0'), ('0', '1', '1', '0', '1'), ('1', '0', '0', '1', '0'), ('1', '0', '1', '0', '1'), ('1', '1', '0', '0', '1'), ('1', '1', '1', '1', '1')); begin -- Check each pattern. for i in patterns'range loop -- Set the inputs. i0 <= patterns(i).i0; i1 <= patterns(i).i1; ci <= patterns(i).ci; -- Wait for the results. wait for 1 ns; -- Check the outputs. assert s = patterns(i).s report "bad sum value" severity error; assert co = patterns(i).co report "bad carray out value" severity error; end loop; assert false report "end of test" severity note; -- Wait forever; this will finish the simulation. wait; end process; end behav;
As usual, you should analyze the design:
$ ghdl -a adder_tb.vhdlAnd build an executable for the testbench:
$ ghdl -e adder_tbYou do not need to specify which object files are required: GHDL knows them and automatically adds them in the executable. Now, it is time to run the testbench:
$ ./adder_tb adder_tb.vhdl:52:7:(assertion note): end of test