Advantages of Using HDLs to Design FPGAs

Using HDLs to design high-density FPGAs is advantageous for the following reasons.

• Top-Down Approach for Large Projects - HDLs are used to create complex designs. The top-down approach to system design supported by HDLs is advantageous for large projects that require many designers working together. After the overall design plan is determined, designers can work independently on separate sections of the code.
  
  
• Functional Simulation Early in the Design Flow - You can verify the functionality of your design early in the design flow by simulating the HDL description. Testing your design decisions before the design is implemented at the RTL or gate level allows you to make any necessary changes early in the design process.
  
  
• Synthesis of HDL Code to Gates - You can synthesize your hardware description to a design implemented with gates. This step decreases design time by eliminating the traditional gate-level bottleneck. Synthesis to gates also reduces the number of errors that can occur during a manual translation of a hardware description to a schematic design. Additionally, you can apply the techniques used by the synthesis tool (such as machine encoding styles or automatic I/O insertion) during the optimization of your design to the original HDL code, resulting in greater efficiency.
  
  
• Early Testing of Various Design Implementations - HDLs allow you to test different implementations of your design early in the design flow. You can then use the synthesis tool to perform the logic synthesis and optimization into gates. Additionally, Xilinx FPGAs allow you to implement your design at your computer. Since the synthesis time is short, you have more time to explore different architectural possibilities at the Register Transfer Level (RTL). You can reprogram Xilinx FPGAs to test several implementations of your design.