Hudson, Rhett Daniel2014-03-142014-03-141994-06-05etd-04182009-041249http://hdl.handle.net/10919/42143Successful 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.x, 160 leavesBTDapplication/pdfenIn CopyrightLD5655.V855 1994.H837Computer-aided engineeringProduct life cycleVHDL (Computer hardware description language)Thesishttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-04182009-041249/