The authors show that switched-level models can be written in VHDL (VHSIC hardware descriptive language) without special-purpose knowledge in the VHDL simulator. As a result, such VHDL switch-level descriptions may be executed on any simulator supporting the VHDL. The authors present a VHDL switch-level value system, discuss resolution functions, modeling tools written in VHDL, and describe an algorithm coded in VHDL for the modeling of bidirectional pass transistors.>

This paper presents aspects of a compiler for a new hardware description language (VHDL) written using attribute grammar techniques. VHDL is introduced, along with the new compiler challenges brought by a language that extends an Ada subset for the purpose of describing hardware. Attribute grammar programming solutions are presented for some of the language challenges.