Introductory VHDL: From Simulation to Synthesis + XILINX Foundation Series Software, Version 2.1i by Sudhakar Yalamanchili - 9780130809827 - Compare Discount Book Prices & Save up to 90%

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		Introductory VHDL: From Simulation to Synthesis + XILINX Foundation Series Software, Version 2.1i by Sudhakar Yalamanchili ISBN-10: 9780130809827 ISBN-10: 0-13-080982-9 ISBN-13: 9780130809827 ISBN-13: 978-0-13-080982-7 Paperback 2000-07-23 Prentice Hall Find Lowest Price
Reviews

You won't learn much from this overpriced, out of date book. First, it does not teach you VHDL as you would expect. As others have commented, it never gets down to brass tacks an explains how the VHDL language works. Also, the software it describes is WAY WAY out of date. To the point of useless. While the author is knowledgeable in the subject, he needs to hire a ghost writer and actually try the book on real students. He would be in for a shock if it was a fair test. I feel sorry for you were forced to buy the book for a class. There are MUCH better books available, at a much better price. BTW I have found used copies for as little as 3 dollars. Search on the ISBN to find them.
Vaguely Written This book was assigned to me as a textbook for a VHDL Lab, a core requirement for my major (Electrical Engineering). If I could have easily made sense of my professor's lectures, I would have found this book a nice complement. However, it is by no means a great introductory book. I say this because even though VHDL is designed as a hardware simulation language, it seems like it's more better introduced the same way programming languages are; for example: basic file structure, what those parts mean, basic data types, what each one means, typecasting, loops, and so on. This book lacks an adequate definition of all of those, and instead just shows the reader examples of that code, WITHOUT EVER HAVING DEFINED WHAT THE PARTS OF THAT CODE MEAN! As such, I've given up on this expensive text book, and settled on another, which introduces VHDL more in a way similar to any modern programming language.
Don't waste your time This is easily the worst technical book that I have ever read. To be fair I gave up after 55 pages and almost the same number of errors. Diagrams are missing pieces or labels, or are just incorrect. The examples are either too vague to make sense or are incomplete or wrong. After three chapters the author had rambled through such an abstract description of the VHDL that he explained nothing. Save your money and buy almost any other VHDL book.
Clear concepts in concise description I have found the book so helpful after trying to find answers on line or from other VHDL books. It helped me greatly in understanding the concepts, some times assisted by the just in-time figures. For example the concept of 'delayed(T) signal attribute has been clearly explained and even illustrated with a Figure. We can not only use the signal to assign another one, but also more importantly we can "check for relationships between the current value of the signal and an older value of the same signal". This has helped me to understand some professional VHDL programs. The author must be such a knowledgeable professor who can teach the concepts so clearly as well. Thanks for the book!
Overall, good book for begineers. had to buy this book for subject at uni. The arena of VHDL, digital logic, synthesis, simulation and FPGA's is a broad subject and it can be hard to know where to start and where to find the right information. Overall I found the book to be a good introductory text and reference but with a few small annoying features. This book is definitely at the begineer's level. The really good feature of this book is the focus on synthesis of VHDL code. If you are learning VHDL from what vendors publish and what is on the internet you may not find what you need. Chapter 7 especially will fill in the missing pieces and give you a good idea of what is going on with things such as synthesis compiliers. Haven't seen any other texts that explain that kind of thing. Some items that let the book down for me was that it seemed to be riddled with textual errors. Numerous times there seemed to be words missing from sentences, which really interrupts the flow of learning. The other part that was frustrating was that the tone the author took seemed to be like an adult talking to a baby. However, he proves his point and I can understand the motivation for doing so, as VHDL is not a normal programming language. The book covers FPGA's (indirectly) and the author shows to reference elements in an FPGA if needed, whilst still sticking to the whole VHDL theme. That is something that I found good. Something I believe that would have been helpful would be having the simulation software on the CD, with an appendix overview of what is going on with those tools. If you are an undergraduate, new to VHDL and are new to using EDA software like Xilinx and don't quite follow everything, then this book will get you going quickstart. It can help save you alot of potential time being wasted.

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