Re: ADA - VHDL

[stephen@srbailey.com (Stephen A. Bailey)]

>>There are things which
>>I can not do in VHDL which I can in ADA and for which I see no reason.
>> some examples:
>>        type new Integer;
>>        generics;
>Unless there is a nomenclature problem, VHDL has these.  I use them
>often.

True.  You don't need to say "new"; simply:

    type New_int is range <integer range>;

Also, generics are limited to entities and blocks.  (Something Ada
does not have.)  The original statement probably referred to their
omission from packages in VHDL.

>>        variant records"
>
>As for the other two.  VHDL is, in the end, a way to describe
>*hardware*.  There are some extremely useful software construct which
>simply do not translate well to hardware.  (recursive structures is one
>of these)

The main issue with variant records is how they translate into
events/transactions for signals declared to be of a variant record
type (or a type containing such a subelement).  VHDL semantics break
composite signals down to the scalar level.

VHDL does allow recursive structures via generates and component
instantiations.


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