An excursion into VHDL

The complete VHDL journey known as The Excursion can be accomplished within eight hours. Upon its completion, the students will have encountered literally 90% of the VHDL language. The fundamental concepts of VHDL have consequently been mastered and the students are now prepared for the second part of the comprehensive course that the author has designed. The students can now view all subsequent course topics from a more mature perspective. They now understand how the various VHDL pieces fit together. Consequently, they can better grasp the overall significance of the modeling techniques and caveats presented in the remaining parts of the course. The flow of this complete four day VHDL training seminar is very popular with the students. Yet, as this paper shows, the overall success of this course depends very much on the in-depth journey that is conducted during the critical first day's lesson. This excursion into VHDL is much more than just a clever educational medium. It is also a very entertaining adventure in which the students directly interact with the real-world rhythm of VHDL.