This text offers a comprehensive treatment of VHDL and its applications to the design and simulation of real, industry-standard circuits. It focuses on the use of VHDL rather than solely on the language, showing why and how certain types of circuits are inferred from the language constructs and how any of the four simulation categories can be implemented. It makes a rigorous distinction between VHDL for synthesis and VHDL for simulation.

The book covers a broad range of algorithms in depth, yet makes their design and analysis accessible to all levels of readers.