Hardware book like "Code Complete"?

Hi all,

Is there some hardware RTL book like "Code Complete" by Steve
McConnell? 

Thanks! 
Davy

Try the text "RTL Hardware Design Using VHDL:
Coding for Efficiency, Portability, and Scalability."
A sample chapter on FSM can be found in

http://academic.csuohio.edu/chu_p/

Hope this helps.

S.C.

Davy wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Is there some hardware RTL book like "Code Complete" by Steve
> McConnell? 
> 
> Thanks! 
> Davy

> Is there some hardware RTL book like "Code Complete" by Steve
> McConnell?

I don't think so, but that would be super cool if there was. Have you
considered writing one?

My impression is that hardware people don't like to write much, and
even if they do, they don't have time to sit down and document all of
the important "big issues" that new people need to learn in order to be
effective.

But if anyone writes a book like this it will fly off the shelves!

Hi Eric,
It is not because hardware engineers are lazy, but most of what they
have written for any interesting projects are properties of their
companies that prevent them from disclosing, not mention writing a
book.

SunMicro system published their CPU core with 350K code lines. If there
is a retired Sun engineer who had involved in the design and will write
something about the CPU project, I would like to be the first one to
order his book. Nobody can read a CPU design with 350K code lines and
at the same time without comments and introductions.

Weng

Eric wrote:
> > Is there some hardware RTL book like "Code Complete" by Steve
> > McConnell?
>
> I don't think so, but that would be super cool if there was. Have you
> considered writing one?
>
> My impression is that hardware people don't like to write much, and
> even if they do, they don't have time to sit down and document all of
> the important "big issues" that new people need to learn in order to be
> effective.
> 
> But if anyone writes a book like this it will fly off the shelves!

Eric wrote:

> But if anyone writes a book like this it will fly off the shelves!

A few hundred copies would fly off the shelves.

There's probably about 10,000 digital designers
in the US. Not all of those do hardware description
and not all of those write their own RTL.
Those are not numbers that would excite
a major publisher.
Writing and editing a book is two long years
of work, whatever the subject.

            -- Mike Treseler

Too bad the author is a proponent of the ancient style of separate
clocked and combinatorial processes in VHDL. He even uses a third
process for registered outputs.

I think he needs to discover what variables can do for you in a clocked
process.

Andy

Mike Treseler wrote:
> Eric wrote:
>
> > But if anyone writes a book like this it will fly off the shelves!
>
> A few hundred copies would fly off the shelves.
>
> There's probably about 10,000 digital designers
> in the US. Not all of those do hardware description
> and not all of those write their own RTL.
> Those are not numbers that would excite
> a major publisher.
> Writing and editing a book is two long years
> of work, whatever the subject.
>
>             -- Mike Treseler

And even in a metro hub like Boston, MIT Cambridge area, a good book
store inside the Microcenter hardly ever sold any of these Hardware
books to any of us, the books were really too expensive at $70-$150 &
up so were mostly browsed (and dated). They dumped them at $10 a pop
instead and now stick to the VB, Java, Web, & ofcourse "Code Complete"
stuff that does move.

Softbooks in Marlboro also moved on sigh.

When you visit DAC & other big hardware design events, you can often
talk directly with several fine publishers, they are often quite eager
to talk to would be authors too. They also have all the relevant and
upcoming books in their booths with a modest show discount too.

I get the impression that unless you are writing for the college
market, the payback for the author would never cover the time spent.
And by the time you are ready to write, the subject is already changed.

John Jakson
transputer guy

I believe that separating the FSM into a combinational logic and a
register is the first guideline for coding state machines in "Reuse
methodology manual" by Keating.

Mike G.

> Andy wrote:
> Too bad the author is a proponent of the ancient style of separate
> clocked and combinatorial processes in VHDL. He even uses a third
> process for registered outputs.
>
> I think he needs to discover what variables can do for you in a clocked
> process.
> 
> Andy

On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 17:07:53 -0700, 
Mike Treseler <mike_treseler@comcast.net> wrote:

>> But if anyone writes a book like this it will fly off the shelves!
>
>A few hundred copies would fly off the shelves.
[...]
>Those are not numbers that would excite
>a major publisher.
>Writing and editing a book is two long years
>of work, whatever the subject.

Agreed.

However...  it seems to me that comp.lang.verilog/vhdl
and comp.arch.fpga represents a useful pool of 
expertise.  It's not part of *my* skill-set to do this,
but I wonder if someone could consider setting-up
a Wiki (freely-editable website) that could be used
as a readily accessible repository of this kind of 
stuff?  It would take a while before we got a 
reasonable collection of material in it, but a couple
of evenings' work by each of a few dozen skilled
people might make for a great collection of ideas 
and tips.  And who knows, at some point it might
provide the source material for a real paper-and-ink
book that you could take on vacation to read at
the beach :-)  The Tcl/Tk Wiki is an alive-and-kicking
example: see http://wiki.tcl.tk/0

Here are some ramblings that convince me it's an
idea worth pursuing:

 Our VHDL and Verilog courses teach language essentials
and coding style, and discuss some generally-applicable 
design techniques such as FSMs, but to keep them generic
(and a reasonable length!) we don't discuss how to design 
any specific kind of hardware.  But we have often been 
asked to create a course covering "the art of good RTL 
design" or somesuch.  What these customers seem
to want is something like "thirty years of design 
experience in a three-day class".  It's never been 
feasible for us to do that, because the exact content 
would be so specific to the particular needs of any 
one customer.  But an open, peer-moderated, 
frequently-updated repository sounds like a good 
idea to me.  I don't mean a library of complete 
ready-cooked designs like opencores.org; rather,
I'm thinking of a collection of "design patterns" 
and shared experience. 

Any takers?
-- 
Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how
VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * e * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Project Services

Doulos Ltd., 22 Market Place, Ringwood, BH24 1AW, UK
jonathan.bromley@MYCOMPANY.com
http://www.MYCOMPANY.com

The contents of this message may contain personal views which 
are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.

In article <4iak6qF2v1p3U1@individual.net>,
Mike Treseler  <mike_treseler@comcast.net> wrote:
>Eric wrote:
>
>> But if anyone writes a book like this it will fly off the shelves!
>
>A few hundred copies would fly off the shelves.
>
>There's probably about 10,000 digital designers
>in the US. Not all of those do hardware description
>and not all of those write their own RTL.
>Those are not numbers that would excite
>a major publisher.
>Writing and editing a book is two long years
>of work, whatever the subject.

In the software world if it took two years to write a book the content 
would be seriously outdated by the time the book came out.  A lot of the 
publishers of software books (O'Reilly, The Pragmatic Programmers even 
APress now) are aiming for a six month cycle.  In fact those publishers 
have now gotten the idea of selling pre-release titles as PDFs: you buy 
the pre-release PDF early for a reduced fee so you have access to the 
content and then later on when the final book comes out you get the paper 
version for an additional fee. That way your readers can access time-sensitive 
information early on.  

The other issue with hardware books like this is that the market is 
relatively small (I'm guessing that the ratio of software engineers to 
hardware engineers is at least 30:1).  It 
could be a good opportunity to self publish where 
you publish not paper books but PDFs (this is happening on the software side).  
Then instead of having to pay $70 for a title because the audience is 
small, the author charges $20 for a pdf and gets to keep all of it instead 
of getting a small royalty from a publisher.  If you manage to sell 1000 
of them you've made $20K and that's generally a lot better than what you'd 
get from a publisher.  One publisher (The Pragmatic Programmers) even 
publishes mini-books which are less than 100 pages (not paper, pdf only) 
which they sell for $8 to $10.  It wouldn't be hard to write 100 pages in 
2 to 3 months (part-time even).

Phil