This page describes some terms and topics that are used in the semiconductor industry. This includes companies such as ARM, AMD and Intel.

• HDL - (Hardware Description Language) refers to any languages that describe hardware
• RTL - (Register Transistor Level) refers to the level of abstraction that you're writing in. Most hardware is written in RTL, meaning you describe things at the register level (flip flops, latches, etc).
• Emulation - Emulation enables one computer system to behave like another. For example, you can build an emulator that runs gamebox games.
• Verification - Answers the question: did we design it according to the specification?
• Validation - Answers the question: does it work correctly? Does it meet the needs of the customer or end user?

Further reading

[1] Difference between simulation and emulation
[2] RTL vs HDL
[3] System on a chip (SoC)

Other worthwhile resources

Cadence Palladium XP Series - provides some good high level explainations
hardware emulation wiki page

AGESA
AGESA Presentation
AMD Coreboot Release
SimNow Presentation

Note: this section is still under development.

RTL resources:

http://iverilog.icarus.com/ http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/

http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page
http://wiki.osdev.org/Bochs

Contributing authors:

Created by kluong on 2016/06/19 23:12.