5. VHDL extensions

5.1 VHDL93

After the DoD declassified VHDL, the European influence on the evolution of the standard became very important, which is reflected in VHDL93, which incorporated many of the requests collected in Europe.

Europe was also the quickest to adopt the new standard, which is now largely dominant, unlike in the USA and Japan, where it faces stiff competition from VERILOG. There's a cultural aspect to this, as Europe has always been a place of proliferation of languages (natural or formal). There was a strong need for a "neutral" standard, from which VHDL benefited. The VHDL Analog Extensions Group was initially created in Europe as a specification group for VHDL93. However, given the scale of the changes required, the American partners preferred to create...