VHDL-AMS and Verilog-AMS as alternative hardware description languages for efficient modeling of multidiscipline systems

• Published in: IEEE Trans. on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, vol. 24, num. 2, p. 204-225
• Publication date: 2005

This paper focuses on commonalities and differences between the two mixed-signal hardware description languages VHDL-AMS and Verilog-AMS in the case of modeling heterogeneous or multi-discipline systems. The paper has two objectives. The first one consists of modeling the structure and the behavior of an airbag system using both the VHDL-AMS and the Verilog-AMS languages. Such a system encompasses several time abstractions (i.e. discrete-time and continuous-time), several disciplines, or energy domains (i.e., electrical, thermal, optical, mechanical, and chemical), and several continuous-time description formalisms (i.e., conservative-law and signal-flow descriptions). The second objective is to discuss the results of the proposed modeling process in terms of the descriptive capabilities of the VHDL-AMS and Verilog-AMS languages and of the generated simulation results. The tools used are Advance-MS from Mentor Graphics for VHDL-AMS and AMS Simulator from Cadence Design Systems for Verilog-AMS. The paper shows that both languages offer effective means to describe and simulate multi-discipline systems, although using different descriptive approaches. It also highlights current tool limitations since full language definitions are not yet supported.

Note: http://lsmwww.epfl.ch/tcad_paper

Keywords: VHDL-AMS ; Verilog-AMS ; Mixed-signal modeling and imulation ; Multi-discipline modeling ; Accelerometer ; EKV MOS model ; Optical link ; Chemical system ; Airbag ; Thermo-electrical interactions

Reference

• LSM-ARTICLE-2005-001
• doi:NA
• View record in Web of Science

Record created on 2005-08-30, modified on 2012-03-21