Let's Program the Transistors
Digital Hardware Design
In VLSI design, maintaining clean, error-free HDL code is essential for successful chip development. One of the most effective ways to ensure code quality is by running lint checks—a static analysis technique that detects potential coding issues before simulation or synthesis. This article provides a practical, step-by-step guide on how to run lint tools, interpret lint…
In VLSI design, ensuring high-quality, error-free RTL code is critical for successful chip development. One essential step in this process is performing a lint check on your HDL code. Linting helps detect potential coding issues early, improving code reliability, readability, and synthesis results. This article explains what lint checking is, why it matters in VLSI design, highlights…
Read More “Lint Check in VLSI Design: Common Linting Errors and How to Fix Them” »
When working with Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) such as Verilog or VHDL, understanding the design flow is crucial for successful digital circuit development. Three fundamental steps in this flow are Compilation, Elaboration, and Simulation. These steps ensure that your HDL code is syntactically correct, logically consistent, and behaves as expected before hardware implementation. In this article, we will…
Read More “Compilation, Elaboration, and Simulation in HDL: A Clear Guide with Examples” »
In digital electronics and VLSI design, adders are fundamental building blocks used to perform arithmetic operations. Among various types of adders, the 4-bit Ripple Carry Adder (RCA) is one of the simplest and most commonly studied designs. It is widely used to add two 4-bit binary numbers and produce a 4-bit sum along with a carry-out. This…
Read More “Understanding the 4-bit Ripple Carry Adder: Verilog Design and Testbench Explained” »
Welcome back to our Clock Domain Crossing (CDC) series! In our first post, we introduced the critical challenges of CDC in digital designs. In this article, we focus on one of the most fundamental and effective techniques to tackle metastability, a core issue in CDC: the two-stage flip-flop synchronizer. Understanding metastability and how this simple synchronizer design…
Ensuring data integrity is a critical aspect of digital communication and storage systems. One of the most reliable and widely used error-detecting techniques is the Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC). If you’re working with FPGAs, ASICs, or digital systems, implementing a CRC generator efficiently in hardware is essential. In this comprehensive blog post, we’ll walk you through…
Read More “How to Design and Test a CRC Generator in Verilog Using Shift Registers and XOR” »
In digital design, shifting bits efficiently is crucial for many applications like arithmetic operations, data manipulation, and processor instruction execution. A barrel shifter is a hardware component that shifts data by a variable number of bits in a single clock cycle, making it a vital building block in modern digital systems. If you’re diving into Verilog and…
Read More “How to Design an Efficient Barrel Shifter in Verilog: Step-by-Step Guide” »
In today’s complex digital systems, multiple clock domains are the norm rather than the exception. Whether you’re designing an FPGA, ASIC, or SoC, it’s almost guaranteed that different parts of your chip will operate on different clocks. This creates a critical design challenge known as Clock Domain Crossing (CDC). In this first post of our CDC…
Read More “Clock Domain Crossing (CDC) Fundamentals: What Every Digital Designer Should Know” »
In digital design, clocks are the heartbeat of your system. But sometimes, the clock frequency you get from your oscillator or PLL is too fast for certain parts of your design. That’s where a clock divider comes in handy. It helps you generate slower clock signals by dividing down a faster input clock. In this blog…
Writing clean and reliable Verilog code is essential for designing predictable and efficient digital circuits. One common pitfall that many designers encounter is unintended latch inference. This subtle issue can cause your design to behave unexpectedly, leading to timing problems and simulation mismatches. In this post, we’ll explain what latch inference is, why it happens, and…