7 Best SystemVerilog Books To Read in [2024] UPDATED

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Nowadays, it is difficult to design a complex system on chip (SoC) for a mobile device or any other consumer electronics goods without a HDL. SystemVerilog is among the three most popular and commonly used Hardware Description Language to model, design, simulate, test and implement electronic systems.

System Verilog is bit of hybrid, it is a combination of hardware description and hardware verification language. This HDL is based on Verilog and some extensions.

If you want to learn this interesting Hardware Description Language on your own there is nothing better way than picking-up some good books.

We have researched and compiled a list of the 7 best SystemVerilog books that can help you learn about every aspect of it.

Best SystemVerilog Books for Beginners & Experts

These SystemVerilog books are suitable for beginners, intermediate learners as well as experts. Let’s take an overview of these 7 best SystemVerilog books one by one and find which book is more suitable for you to start.

 

1. SystemVerilog for Verification

SystemVerilog for Verification: A Guide to Learning the Testbench Language Features teaches all verification features of the SystemVerilog language, providing hundreds of examples to clearly explain the concepts and basic fundamentals. It contains materials for both the full-time verification engineer and the student learning this valuable skill.

Authors Chris Spear and Greg Tumbush start with how to verify a design, and then use that context to demonstrate the language features, including the advantages and disadvantages of different styles, allowing readers to choose between alternatives. This textbook contains end-of-chapter exercises designed to enhance students’ understanding of the material. Other features of this revision include:

  • New sections on static variables, print specifiers, and DPI from the 2009 IEEE language standard
  • Descriptions of UVM features such as factories, the test registry, and the configuration database
  • Expanded code samples and explanations
  • Numerous samples that have been tested on the major SystemVerilog simulators

 

2. SystemVerilog for Design

This book is a comprehensive reference text for engineers who want to learn about SystemVerilog for their next generation designs.

SystemVerilog is a rich set of extensions to the Verilog Hardware Description Language (Verilog HDL). SystemVerilog for Design describes the correct usage of these extensions for modeling digital designs. These important extensions enable the representation of complex digital logic in concise, accurate, and reusable hardware models.

All key SystemVerilog design features are presented, such as declaration spaces, two-state data types, enumerated types, user-defined types, structures, unions, interfaces, and RTL coding extensions. Emphasis is placed on the proper usage of these enhancements for simulation and synthesis.

Design engineers, engineering managers and engineering students working with all sizes and types of digital designs, whether FPGA, ASIC or full custom, will find this book to be an invaluable learning tool and reference guide.

This book explains how to use SystemVerilog effectively and provides numerous examples to illustrate how each of the language constructs can best be utilized.

 

3. RTL Modeling with SystemVerilog for Simulation and Synthesis

This book is both a tutorial and a reference for engineers who use the SystemVerilog Hardware Description Language (HDL) to design ASICs and FPGAs. The book shows how to write SystemVerilog models at the Register Transfer Level (RTL) that simulate and synthesize correctly, with a focus on proper coding styles and best practices.

SystemVerilog is the latest generation of the original Verilog language, and adds many important capabilities to efficiently and more accurately model increasingly complex designs. This book reflects the SystemVerilog-2012/2017 standards.

This book is for engineers who already know, or who are learning, digital design engineering. The book does not present digital design theory; it shows how to apply that theory to write RTL models that simulate and synthesize correctly.

The creator of the original Verilog Language, Phil Moorby says about this book (an excerpt from the book’s Foreword): “Many published textbooks on the design side of SystemVerilog assume that the reader is familiar with Verilog, and simply explain the new extensions. It is time to leave behind the stepping-stones and to teach a single consistent and concise language in a single book, and maybe not even refer to the old ways at all! If you are a designer of digital systems, or a verification engineer searching for bugs in these designs, then SystemVerilog will provide you with significant benefits, and this book is a great place to learn the design aspects of SystemVerilog.”

 

4. SystemVerilog Assertions and Functional Coverage

This book provides a hands-on, application-oriented guide to the language and methodology of both SystemVerilog Assertions and SystemVerilog Functional Coverage.

Readers will benefit from the step-by-step approach to functional hardware verification using SystemVerilog Assertions and Functional Coverage, which will enable them to uncover hidden and hard to find bugs, point directly to the source of the bug, provide for a clean and easy way to model complex timing checks and objectively answer the question ‘have we functionally verified everything’.

This book explains each concept with easy to understand examples, simulation logs and applications derived from real projects. Readers will be empowered to tackle the modeling of complex checkers for functional verification, thereby drastically reducing their time to design and debug.

This SystemVerilog book covers:

  • Covers in its entirety the latest IEEE-1800 2012 LRM syntax and semantics
  • Covers both SystemVerilog Assertions and SystemVerilog Functional Coverage language and methodologies
  • Provides practical examples of the what, how and why of Assertion Based Verification and Functional Coverage methodologies
  • Explains each concept in a step-by-step fashion and applies it to a practical real life example
  • Includes 6 practical LABs that enable readers to put in practice the concepts explained in the book.

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5. Logic Design and Verification Using SystemVerilog

SystemVerilog is a Hardware Description Language that enables designers to work at the higher levels of logic design abstractions that match the increased complexity of current day integrated circuit and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) designs.

The majority of the book assumes a basic background in logic design and software programming concepts. It is directed at: students currently in an introductory logic design course that also teaches SystemVerilog; designers who want to update their skills from Verilog or VHDL; and students in VLSI design and advanced logic design courses that include verification as well as design topics.

The book starts with a tutorial introduction on hardware description languages and simulation. It proceeds to the register-transfer design topics of combinational and finite state machine (FSM) design. The book covers the design of FSM-datapath designs and their interfaces, including SystemVerilog interfaces. Then it covers the more advanced topics of writing testbenches including using assertions and functional coverage.

The goal of the book is to introduce the broad spectrum of features in the language in a way that complements introductory and advanced logic design and verification courses, and then provides a basis for further learning. Solutions to problems at the end of chapters, and text copies of the SystemVerilog examples are available from the author as described in the Preface.

 

6. Designing Digital Systems With SystemVerilog

This textbook is for a university freshman/sophomore course on digital logic and digital systems design. In addition, the SystemVerilog language is interwoven throughout the text, providing both new learners as well as existing digital logic designers an introduction to the SystemVerilog language and its use for designing digital systems.

Digital design topics include: binary number representations and arithmetic, Boolean Algebra and truth tables, combinational logic circuits, logic minimization, latches and flip flops, registers, counters, state graphs, finite state machines, and FPGA devices.

SystemVerilog topics include: gate-level design, structural design, dataflow assignments, combinational and sequential always blocks and their use, the design of registers, counters, and finite state machines using SystemVerilog.

The book concludes with three fully worked SystemVerilog examples of digital designs: debouncing a switch, a soda machine controller, and a UART.

 

7. FPGA Prototyping by SystemVerilog Examples

This book follows the “learning-by-doing” approach to teach the fundamentals and practices of HDL synthesis and FPGA prototyping. The new edition uses a coherent series of examples to demonstrate the process to develop sophisticated digital circuits and IP (intellectual property) cores, integrate them into an SoC (system on a chip) framework, realize the system on an FPGA prototyping board, and verify the hardware and software operation.

The examples start with simple gate-level circuits, progress gradually through the RT (register transfer) level modules, and lead to a functional embedded system with custom I/O peripherals and hardware accelerators. Although it is an introductory text, the examples are developed in a rigorous manner, and the derivations follow the strict design guidelines and coding practices used for large, complex digital systems.

The book is completely updated and uses the SystemVerilog language, which “absorbs” the Verilog language. It presents the hardware design in the SoC context and introduces the hardware-software co-design concept. Instead of treating examples as isolated entities, the book integrates them into a single coherent SoC platform that allows readers to explore both hardware and software “programmability” and develop complex and interesting embedded system projects.