Designing highly parameterized hardware using xHDL

Current submicron technologies allow a very high degree of integration, resulting in incredibly complex designs implemented in a single chip. The task of the hardware designer is every day more complicated since the data and parameters involved in a design are wider and with increasing complexity in the interfaces. Modular design is needed to deal with these large, regular and repetitive structures. With this purpose the meta-language xHDL was conceived, providing flexible and friendly mechanisms for component parameterization, customization, instantiation and interconnection. In this paper two case studies will be analyzed in depth to illustrate the advantages of using xHDL. Based on the lessons learnt when specifying the case studies the meta-language has been extended to deal with new advanced features such as instantiation of external VHDL components and automatic generation of libraries of components.