This concise and interesting book provides a detailed approach to FPGA-based digital circuit and system design using VHDL. It presents the basic concepts in organized and progressive phases. The textbook covers the constructs of the VHDL programming language with a large number of implementable examples. A multitude of complete illustrative examples are also included.
The second part of the book discusses other important features of the design aspects using VHDL such as components, functions, and procedures. The book is intended for computer and electrical engineering students and practicing engineers. See alsoDigital Electronics and Design with VHDL

If you are searching for the best book in VHDL ever, you will not find such a book! However, if you decided to start learning VHDL, Pedroni (the author) got you. I am doing my masters and I just finished reading this book and I finished my final project for the course as well. It is my first course in VHDL. By finishing this book as I said I was able to design and implement a FULL CPU (MIPS architecture) as a final project for the course. and I am sure that if you read this book you will do a similar or better job.

Regarding books, we, i.e. students, are looking for specific features:
1- well written and easy to read.
2- well organized.
3- correct and clear ideas with smooth information flow.
4- good and correct solved examples.
5- are you going to use that book if you worked in industry.
6- LEAST NUMBER of pages.

all these requirements are met in this book. within less than 400 pages you will learn, how to implement any digital system. If you read this book, you will not learn digital filters design (FIR, IIR) or neural Networks (NN) design. However, if you know how to design them, this book presents some examples about how to implement FIR, IIR and NN using VHDL.
I highly recommend reading this book as a start up, and for sure your next step (I mean after reading this book) will be working in industry. you will need no more books to learn VHDL. instead, you will need to review digital systems' designs and start implementing them using your skills you have from this book.
IN CONCLUSION:
"THIS BOOK IS ONE OF THE BEST VHDL BOOKS, AND IT IS A 5-STAR BOOK FOR SURE"

This book does a great job of teaching you how the VHDL language works, and how to use it.
It has many explained examples, and problems you can try.
I agree with others that he does jump around a bit, and you will have to look back or ahead.
It could also use a VHDL Quick Reference and a glossary.
If the index clear should where a key word was first defined, this would work too. It does have an index, but it is not a great index.
I used Xilinx ISE Webpack 9i - which is a free down load - the test and simulate the examples.

I was looking for a simple book to use as the main reference for my students, who are new to the concept of the hardware description languages. I found this the best book to fit my needs. It is simple and has a good organization which takes you slowly through the main concepts of the VHDL. It greatly helped me setting the outline for the course.

I am a physics graduate student who needed to learn VHDL for many of my projects (FPGA-based digital filters, FFT and other high speed digital-based processing).
After spending about a week trying to cookbook/copycat the complicated structures in VHDL I decided it would be best to start at a basic level to get a solid grasp of VHDL.
It is hard to imagine a better introduction.
The author did a perfect job integrating the routine software writing with system design.
All of the code is COMPLETE and all of it works (90% of it I checked myself, when going through examples & problems).
Simulations, complete code and clear diagrams are presented for every example!
If you need to do real engineering work using VHDL, and have a list of designs on your table that are begging for FPGA, ASIC, CPLDs, but don't know how to do it in VHDL, this book is for you.

Some cautionary notes:
1) This book gives you basic, but fundamental knowledge of VHDL. If you know other programming languages (for example assembler, Vis. Basic or C/C++), but need VHDL then after this book you can start writing real code and will be able to understand complicated examples and will easily be able to incorporate IP cores into projects.

Contrary to the opinion of some of the above reviewers, I disagree that this book is a cookbook. It doesn't have any really complicated design examples like FFT.
The book is all about giving the reader a very solid footing of VHDL so that the reader could reference other much more involved references/ code examples/ IP cores etc..

2) This book will be of very little use if you don't know
basic logic/ digital circuits.
The book explains things like carry lookahead adder clearly but very briefly.

3) I found the problems, examples and chapter very well connected. And the problems were very useful.
Note though that although the solutions to problems are provided only to instructors, you can rely on simulations to check if the your solution is correct.

4) I also think that it helps to have a development board (FPGA/CPLD)to check some of the designs.

All of the above is only my opinion, of course.
And thanks to Dr. Pedroni for sharing some of his expertise so well.

This is my first VHDL book and it is very useful. I need VHDL for design and this book covers many design issues. For example, in the variables topic, implementation with both signal and variable are given and their flip flop requirements are compared.
Also common errors are explained and simulations results are given to demonstrate them. There are many examples in the book and they are well used to clarify the issues.