ADA vs VHDL

ADA vs VHDL

[Gerhard Griessnig]

Hello!
We are two Austrian Students and visit this group for the first time.

We need a comparison between VHDL and ADA in  Hardware/Software -
Codesign and simulation.
Does anybody know needful information or literature.

                Thanks for all answers

                                        Gerhard & Peter

Re: ADA vs VHDL

[Jean-Pierre Rosen]

Gerhard Griessnig a �crit dans le message
<3638C82B.ECC52B40@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at>...
>Hello!
>We are two Austrian Students and visit this group for the first time.
>
>We need a comparison between VHDL and ADA in  Hardware/Software -
>Codesign and simulation.
>Does anybody know needful information or literature.
>
There is a connection between the languages; in a sense, VHDL is to hardware
what Ada is to software. For example, there is an Ada CD-ROM tha includes
also
some VHDL.

If you want to have a picture of Ada, the best is to turn to
http://www.adahome.com.
I don't know of a similar place for VHDL, but you should find it using any
usual
search engine.

As far as codesign is concerned, I remember years ago seeing a tool that
would generate VHDL for the hardware part and Ada for the software.
But it was a long time ago, and I'm sorry I can't give more precisions.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  J-P. Rosen (Rosen.Adalog@wanadoo.fr)
      Visit Adalog's web site at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/adalog

Re: ADA vs VHDL

[Brian Rogoff]

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On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Jean-Pierre Rosen wrote:
> Gerhard Griessnig a écrit dans le message
... snip ...
> >We need a comparison between VHDL and ADA in  Hardware/Software -
> >Codesign and simulation.
> >Does anybody know needful information or literature.
> >
> There is a connection between the languages; in a sense, VHDL is to hardware
> what Ada is to software. For example, there is an Ada CD-ROM tha includes
> also
> some VHDL.

Well, I sure hope that isn't true, otherwise Ada has little chance of
acceptance in the US hardware design community, where VHDL is in general 
not thought of highly. Yes, I realize that the same statement could be
made about Ada, but IMO the added complexity of Ada over C brings
significant advantages to the programmer (not to mention that Ada is
*less* complicated than C++) which the added complexity of VHDL over
Verilog does not bring to the hardware designer. 

VHDL has mostly a superficial similarity to Ada, having butchered both the 
package system and generics. That's my opinion, worth every cent you paid
for it ;-) That doesn't mean I think Verilog is great, just that the 
analogy Ada:VHDL as C:Verilog doesn't work for me.

There was someone proposing to use an Ada subset for hardware design, and
I posted the reference in response to another query a while ago.

-- Brian 

Re: ADA vs VHDL

[Frank Oppenheimer]

Gerhard Griessnig wrote:
> 
> Hello!
> We are two Austrian Students and visit this group for the first time.
> 
> We need a comparison between VHDL and ADA in  Hardware/Software -
> Codesign and simulation.
> Does anybody know needful information or literature.
> 
>                 Thanks for all answers
> 
>                                         Gerhard & Peter
Hello to Austria,

	we are currently working in Ada95/VHDL cosimulation project. So we have 
	some experience in cosimulation and codesign with Ada and VHDL.
	Since your question was rather unspecific I can just recommend the
	following refernces.
	
B�ttger, J; Ecker, W.: Comparing Ada'95 and VHDL for Behavioural Hardware
Description on Causal and Synchronous Level. Proceedings of the SIG-VHDL Spring
Working Conference: VHDL User's Forum in Europe, Publication Service of the
University of Cantabria, 
1997

Ecker, W.; B�ttger, J.: Evaluation of Ada'95 and VHDL for System Level Modeling.
Proceedings of the VIUF Spring 1997 Conference, Santa Clara, USA, 1997

Sheraga, R. J.: ANSI C to Behavioral VHDL Translator, Ada to Behavioral VHDL
Translator. The RASSP Digest, Vol. 3, September 1996, Available on the WWW from
URL http://rassp.scra.org/newsletter/html/96sep/news_11.html

Tempelmeier, T.: VHDL and Ada. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium Ada in
Aerospace. To appear, Brussel Eurospace, Paris 1993

Frank

P.S> Most of those papers are also available in german.

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