The use of VHDL in computer-aided support of life-cycle complete product design

Successful competition in the computer systems industry depends on a firm's ability to bring profitable products to market. The success of a product is measured by its future worth to the company. Life-cycle complete design attempts to engineer products that provide maximum future worth. Many components contribute to the overall cost of developing a product. Designing merely to reduce the cost of the components that make up the system is insufficient.

A product must be engineered in a manner that addresses all pertinent issues over its complete life cycle. This research examines the use of the VHSIC Hardware Description Language as a computer-aided engineering tool for life-cycle complete engineering. VHDL is traditionally used to model the functional behavior of digital systems. This thesis provides an overview of a life-cycle complete design process and describes the use of VHDL to support that process. A case study is presented to illustrate the use of VHDL for life-cycle complete modeling.