I was looking through multiple IP cores recently and I noticed that most of the cores use a very limited subset of VHDL. However, looking at synthesis tools available today, I noticed that they support quite a lot of language features including structured datatypes (records) and file I/O.
I've currently seen only one IP (LEON2 SPARC processor from Gaisler, open source) which uses records in RTL coding.
I was wondering what's the common opinion on using these features? Do you use it or not and why?
I was looking through multiple IP cores recently and I noticed that most of the cores use a very limited subset of VHDL. However, looking at synthesis tools available today, I noticed that they support quite a lot of language features including structured datatypes (records) and file I/O.
Are you sure File IO is supported? Which tool? AFAIK File IO is a sim-only concept. Records are great features, but under utilized due to historic "fears of synthesis tools". As you said, i see no reason to hold back on using them now.