So far, the spotlight has fallen over the FIR filter design and its various forms. However, there is a problem that is just as important – how to ensure the implementation is working correctly. Whereas there are some standard techniques, it’s not always clear whether the design is error-proof. Therefore, this post discusses the most essential testing procedures and introduces a verification method that can easily incorporate them.


The previously discussed filter describes a general-purpose device that can fit in many applications but is not necessarily the optimal solution. This is where application-specific FIR structures come in. Therefore, this post aims to present some of the more popular filter structures used in specialized applications.


When designing VHDL for safety-critical FPGA applications, it’s not enough to write testbenches at best-effort. You have to present proof that the module works as intended and without undesirable side-effects.

Formal verification techniques can help you map a requirement to a test, proving that your VHDL module conforms to the specification. It’s an instrumental tool for verifying healthcare applications or gaining DO-254 certification for airborne FPGA solutions.

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Text strings in VHDL are generally limited to fixed-length character arrays. That makes sense because VHDL describes hardware, and generic-length strings require dynamic memory.

To define an array of strings, you have to allocate space at compile-time for the highest number of strings you want to store. And even worse, you must decide on the strings’ max length and pad every occurrence to that number of characters. The code below shows an example usage of such a construct.

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