Home » Programming » 2. Levels of representation and abstraction

2. Levels of representation and abstraction

2. Levels of representation and abstraction

 

A digital system can be represented at different levels of abstraction [1]. This keeps the description and design of complex systems manageable. Figure 1 shows different levels of abstraction.

 

 

 

Figure 1: Levels of abstraction: Behavioral, Structural and Physical

 

The highest level of abstraction is the behavioral level that describes a system in terms of what it does (or how it behaves) rather than in terms of its components and interconnection between them. A behavioral description specifies the relationship between the input and output signals. This could be a Boolean expression or a more abstract description such as the Register Transfer or Algorithmic level. As an example, let us consider a simple circuit that warns car passengers when the door is open or the seatbelt is not used whenever the car key is inserted in the ignition lock At the behavioral level this could be expressed as,

 

Warning = Ignition_on AND ( Door_open OR Seatbelt_off)

 

The structural level, on the other hand, describes a system as a collection of gates and components that are interconnected to perform a desired function. A structural description could be compared to a schematic of interconnected logic gates. It is a representation that is usually closer to the physical realization of a system. For the example above, the structural representation is shown in Figure 2 below.

 

 

 

Figure 2: Structural representation of a “buzzer” circuit.

 

VHDL allows one to describe a digital system at the structural or the behavioral level. The behavioral level can be further divided into two kinds of styles: Data flow and Algorithmic. The dataflow representation describes how data moves through the system. This is typically done in terms of data flow between registers (Register Transfer level). The data flow model makes use of concurrent statements that are executed in parallel as soon as data arrives at the input. On the other hand, sequential statements are executed in the sequence that they are specified. VHDL allows both concurrent and sequential signal assignments that will determine the manner in which they are executed. Examples of both representations will be given later.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Name *
Email *
Website

March 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Pages

Recent Comments

    Archives