Should You Reuse RTL?

ABSTRACT

Ever since hardware description languages (HDLs) were first put into use to specify electronic designs, designers have recycled code. You gain new insights into the use of these HDL descriptions by copying and modifying - with the requisite permissions of course - existing examples. In most cases, code that is recycled probably was never originally meant to be used "as-is". The key to recycling is to quickly figure out how much work is required in order to decide whether or not recycling is practical. In his paper, Tom Dewey analyzes if reusing RTL code is practical and how to accomplish it using HDL Designer.