S PINAL HDL : A comprehensive HDL language
dolu1990, lambdaShade
May 21, 2016
Abstract 3 Core primitives
S PINAL HDL is a new HDL language offering the ability – Base Types Bool, Bits, UInt, SInt, Enumeration.
to break the limitations of the most common hardware de- – Bundle Allows to describe a data structure with the
scription languages, like VHDL and Verilog. possibility to specify the direction (in, out) for each
element. Useful to describe buses.
1 S PINAL HDL Structure – Reg Creates a register signal.
– Vec Allows to create an array of data.
S PINAL HDL is a library constructed over the Scala inter-
nal DSL, allowing the user to design productively his dig- – Mem Gives the possibility to manipulate memory.
ital hardware. The user designs can be converted to VHDL – BlackBox Allows to instantiate a third party HDL
files for synthesis with any PLD/FPGA/ASIC specialized component.
toolchain.
Figure 1: S PINAL HDL structure layers 4 Lib primitives
The Spinal library is separated in two parts : one - the – Interfaces Flow, handshake, fragments, ...
core - providing basic elements for hardware description
– Components FIFOs, inter-clock domain bridges, ...
and another one on it - the lib - providing interfaces and
utilities for construct powerful design and help the user in – Peripherals UART, ...
his tasks. – Utils Gray conversions, counters, one-hot encoding,
majority vote...
2 Highlights – Digital design analysis Tool for pipeline latency
evaluation.
Here’s a list of the main advantages of S PINAL HDL com-
paratively to VHDL and Verilog :
5 To go further...
– No restriction with the genericity of your hardware
description by using the power of the Scala language. – Repositories available on Github :
– No more endless wiring : create and connect complex https://github.com/SpinalHDL
buses like AXI in only one text line. – Some examples :
– Evolving capabilities : create your own buses defini- https://github.com/SpinalHDL/SpinalHDL/
tions and abstraction layers. blob/master/README.md
– Reduce code size by a high factor - especially for
wiring - allowing you to have a better visibility, more
productivity and fewer headaches.
– Available user friendly IDE with auto-completion,
error highlight, navigation shortcut and many others.
– Extract information from your digital design and
generate files containing data about some latency and
addresses, for example.
– Bidirectional translation between bunch of bits and
any data type/structures. Useful to load a complex
data structure from a CPU interface.
– Check for combinational loop/latch presence.
– Check for user unintentional cross clock domain vio-
lations.
