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This figure captures the main features of a complete VHDL model. A single component model is composed of one entity and one or many architectures. The entity represents the interface specification (I/O) of the component. It defines the components external view, sometimes referred to as its "pins".
The architecture(s) describe the function or composition of an entity. There are three general types of architectures. One type of architecture describes the structure of the design (right hand side) in terms of its sub-components and their interconnections. A key item of a structural VHDL architecture is the ”binding statement" which associates the entity of a sub-component to one of the possible several alternative architectures for that component.
A second type of architecture, containing only concurrent statements, is commonly referred to as a dataflow description (left hand side). Concurrent statements execute when data is available on their inputs. These statements can occur in any order within the architecture.
The third type of architecture is the behavioral description in which the functional and possibly timing characteristics are described using VHDL concurrent statements and processes. The process is a concurrent statement of an architecture. All statements contained within a process execute in a sequential order until it gets suspended by a wait statement.
Packages are used to provide a collection of common declarations, constants, and/or subprograms to entities and architectures.
Generics provide a method to communicate static information to an architecture from the external environment. They are passed through the entity construct.
Ports provide the mechanism for a device to communication with its environment. A port declaration defines the names, types, directions, and possible default values for the signals in a component's interface.
Implicit in this figure is the testbench which is the top level of a self-contained simulatable model. The testbench is a special VHDL object for which the entity has no signals in its port declaration. Its architecture often contains construct from all three of the types described above. Structural VHDL concepts are used to connect the model's various components together, Dataflow and behavior concepts are often used to provide the simulation's start stop conditions, or other desired modeling directives.
