Hardware Description Languages

As the size and complexity of digital systems increase, more computer aided design tools which facilitate design entry, verification and automatic hardware generation are being introduced into the design process. The newest addition to this design methodology is Hardware Description Languages (HDLs).

Hardware Description Language is a specialized language used to describe the behaviour and/or structure of digital circuits. HDLs are used to describe hardware for the purpose of simulation, modeling, testing, design and documentation. You can check this [wikipage] for a brief background on HDLs.

For this course, we will be focusing on Verilog. If you are not familiar with Verilog, here's a [short video] to give an overview of what Verilog is.