John, I'm fairly new to VHDL and Verilog. Mark Singer's comments sum it
up well. Most of my work has been with schematic capture and ABEL. A couple
of years ago I started studying VHDL. However, Verilog seemed more natural
for me. While this is a crude comparison, I would think someone with a
strong software background (ie: CS major) probably would be more comfortable
with VHDL. It kind of reminds me of PASCAL or Modula II. For someone like
myself with a strong hardware background and use to programming in C,
Verilog is fairly easy to learn. Aside from what you are comfortable with,
it's important to consider what you want to do now and in the future. VHDL
is a powerful language that goes beyond simple hardware description. Verilog
is more constrained and tightly focused on hardware. Search Google using
"VHDL Verilog compare" and you will find a wealth of info. Note, there is
now a third standard emerging from the two but the name escapes me right
now. I think EDN or one of the newsletters had an article on it a few months
ago.

    Here are some books I started with:

       The Designer's Guide to VHDL
       Peter J. Ashenden
       ISBN: 1-55860-270-4

    Fairly thorough coverage of the language with an eye towards hardware.

       VHDL Starter's Guide
       Sudhakar Yalamanchili
       ISBN: 0-13-519802-X

    Covers the basics and applications in digital design.

       Verilog HDL Synthesis - A Practical Primer
       J. Bhasker
       ISBN: 0-9650391-5-3

    By no means a language reference, it quickly covers the basics and moves
on to real-world hardware examples. This little book has been a big help in
getting up to speed quickly and generating useful code. I still intend to
get a good Verilog reference, but if you have some experience in this area,
I highly recommend this book as part of your library.

    - Tom

At 21:18 21-06-02, John Dammeyer wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Any comments on Verilog verses VHDL for a first timer?   I need to
>create some customized CAN bus bit streams and a Xilinx part seems like
>it just might be the answer.
>
>John Dammeyer

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