Abstract
VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuits Hardware Description Language) is one of the most popular languages (IEEE standard) for building software models of hardware systems. While the typical VHDL-based design environment provides tools for code simulation and logic synthesis, no support is given in order to cope with the increasing complexity of VHDL descriptions and the widespread demand for their quality evaluation and improvement.
Automated source code analysis is a valuable approach to develop, measure and compare models in order to assure the satisfaction of quality requirements of VHDL descriptions before adding them to model libraries. Therefore a static analyzer may assist the user in the challenging task of introducing significant modifications and improvements into source code so that, assuring that VHDL code is developed according to some well-founded guidelines, a relevant impact on the quality of the overall design process may be achieved.
The goal of this paper is to summarize the activities carried out within the SAVE project, leading to the development of a collection of quality analysis tools in order to improve modifiability, reusability, readability of models reducing the VHDL descriptions complexity.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A.Balboni, M.Mastretti, M.Stefanoni (1994) Static Analysis for VHDL model Evaluation, EURO VHDL, Grenoble.
A.Balboni, P.Cavalloro, M.Mastretti, A.Bonomo, E.Paschetta, G.Buonanno, D.Sciuto (1994) A set of tools for VHDL-Code Quality Evaluation, VHDL-FORUM for CAD in EUROPE IEEE, Tremezzo.
A.Balboni, M.Mastretti, A..Bonomo, E.Paschetta, G.Buonanno, D.Sciuto (1994) Tool-supported quality evaluation in VHDL-based design, EDAC 94, Paris.
A.Bonomo, P.Garino, G. Ghigo, A. Balboni, M.Mastretti (1993) VHDL optimization techniques for coding and simulation. Rapporto Tecnico CSELT.
T.J.McCabe (1976) A complexity measure, in IEEE Trans. Software Engineering, vol. SE-2, 308–12.
S.Cha, I.S.Chung, Y.R.Kwon (1993) Complexity measures for concurrent programs based on information-theoretic metrics.
N.E. Fenton (1991) Software metrics: a rigorous approach, Chapman & Hall, Norwich.
J.D. Gannon, E. Katz, V Basili (1986) Metrics for ADA packages: an initial study. Communication of the ACM.
M.Hueber (1991) VHDL experiments on performance. Euro VHDL.
M.Mastretti, M.Sturlesi, S.Tomasello (1995) Quality Measures and Analysis: a way to improve VHDL models. Workshop on Libraries, Component Modeling, Model Verification and Quality Assurance, Nantes.
M.Mastretti, M.Sturlesi, S.Tomasello (1995) Static Analysis of VHDL Model Evaluation: Simulation Efficiency and Complexity. VHDL International User’s Forum, San Diego.
B.A. Kitchenham, S.J. Linkman (1990) Design metrics in practice, in Information and software technology.
O.Levia (1991) Writing high performance VHDL models. Euro VHDL.
S.Midkiff, D.Padua (1990) Issues in the optimization of parallel programs. International Conference on Parallel Processing.
P.Oman, J.Hagemeister (1992) Metrics for assessing a Software system’s maintenability. IEEE Transaction on software engineering.
L.Ott, J.Bieman (1992) Effects of software changes on module cohesion. IEEE Transaction on software engineering.
B.Paulsen O.Levia (1992) Techniques for Writing High Performance and High Quality VHDL Models. Euro VHDL.
D.L.Perry VHDL. McGraw-Hill, Inc.
J.Ramamoorthy, W.Tsai, T. Yamaura, A.Bhide (1985) Metrics guided methodology. Proc. 9th Computer Software and Application Conf., 11.
P.N.Robillard, D.Coupal, F.Coallier (1991) Profiling Software Through the Use of Metrics. Software-Practice and Experience vol.21(5), 507.
S.Shatz (1988) Towards Complexity Metrics for ADA tasking. IEEE Transaction on software engineering.
M. Shepperd (1990) Design metrics: an empirical analysis, Software Engineering Journal.
M. Stefanoni (1994) SAVE: analizzatore statico di codice VHDL.
S.N.Woodfield, H.E.Dunsmore, V.Y. Shen (1981) The effect of modularization and comments on program comprehension. 5th International Conference on Software Engineering.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mastretti, M., Busi, M.L., Sarvello, R., Sturlesi, M., Tomasello, S. (1996). Static Analysis of VHDL Source Code: the SAVE Project. In: Bologna, S., Bucci, G. (eds) Achieving Quality in Software. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34869-8_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34869-8_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-4392-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-34869-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive