4. VHDL

The early 1980s saw a growing trend to replace all existing HDLs with a single one, which would bring together all the concepts that had emerged over the previous two decades to form a global standard.

CONLAN group publishes final report [16] . The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) launches its Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) program, and soon publishes a set of specifications for a new, technology-independent HDL to meet the needs of both the U.S. microelectronics industry and the military (especially in terms of documentation and simulation).

In 1982, the US Air Force published a call for proposals, at the same time classifying the project so that only Americans could respond. A consortium comprising IBM, Texas Instruments and the service company Intermetrics...