Package: ghdl (1.0.0+dfsg-3)

VHDL compiler/simulator

GHDL is a compiler and simulator for VHDL, a Hardware Description Language. GHDL is not an interpreter: it allows you to analyse and elaborate sources to generate machine code from your design. Native program execution is the only way for high speed simulation.

GHDL offers three machine code generation backends: one based on GCC, one using the LLVM compiler suite and a GHDL specific one called mcode. These are available in the ghdl-gcc, ghdl-llvm and ghdl-mcode packages respectively. Both the GCC and LLVM backends create highly optimized code for excellent simulation performance while simulations compiled with the GCC backend also allow coverage testing using gcov. The mcode backend creates less performant code but makes up for it with much faster compilation. It is therefore preferable for smaller projects without large or long running simulations.

Multiple backends can be installed at the same time and selected by either invoking the desired GHDL directly (as ghdl-gcc, ghdl-llvm or ghdl-mcode) or by providing a GHDL_BACKEND environment variable (containing gcc, llvm or mcode) while invoking ghdl.

This package is a dependency package that will make sure at least one backend is installed.

This page is also available in the following languages (How to set the default document language):