Editors for VHDL, Verilog and SystemVerilog
Whether for designing a SOC, an ASIC, an FPGA or even a CPLD, design engineers need a means of writing their HDL code.
They use either a free VHDL editor or Verilog editor or a commercial one.
When deciding what is the very best VHDL/Verilog editor for their needs, most engineers consider these features.
There are three “families” of HDL editors to choose from:
- Traditional Text Editors
General purpose editors that can be configured for editing VHDL code. Many of the most popular general purpose editors (Vi, Emacs) have been around for decades and have gathered a cult following. However, the features have been able to keep up with modern evolutions. - Embedded Tool Editors
Editors that are embedded in EDA tools like simulators or FPGA tools. Usually the editing capabilities of these built-in editors are not very good, sometimes not much more than syntax highlighting. Some EDA vendors don’t even expect their customers to use the built-in tools. They expect them to link the EDA tools to an external text editor. - Stand-alone IDEs
Specialized hardware development environments that integrate with other tools are the youngest and most powerful category of HDL editors. Sometimes they are called VHDL and Verilog code browsers. Especially engineers that have experience with software development might prefer IDEs. IDEs for hardware design have been around for less than a decade, and are gaining popularity.
| traditional text editors | embedded editors | Stand-alone IDEs |
Basic Editing | very good | medium to good | good |
Extensibility | good | low | medium to high |
Learning curve | easy to very hard | medium | easy |
Integration with EDA tools | low | high | medium to high |
Advanced HDL features | based on regular expressions | external compiler | internal compiler |