Slide 29 of 93
Notes:
The purpose of this slide is to provide a basic working definition for process and signal. These definitions are not intended to be comprehensive, and detail will be added throughout the presentation of this and subsequent modules.
All behavioral descriptions in VHDL are constructed using processes. Processes may be defined explicitly where complex behavior can be described in a sequential programming style, or the may be implicitly defined in concurrent signal assignment statements. Both of these mechanisms will be covered in more detail in this and subsequent modules.
The primary purpose of the process is to determine new values for signals. Signals are accessible to other processes, and, therefore, provided a mechanism for the results of one process execution to be communicated to other processes. Signals may be made accessible to processes within other VHDL architectures by connecting them to ports of the respective entities.
