Can someone please help with the behavior of the following verilog code? I am not familiar with the " : " operation folowing an " always begin " statement. Is this some form of a conditional? Thank you.
Code:
always
begin : x
@(s);
begin
........ SOME CODE .....
end
end
It's an *optional* identifier (i.e. a label or name).
You only need it if you wish to reference it from a disable statement or to hierarchically reference local variables declared inside that sequential-block hierarchy.
(some simulators might also use it for more verbose log/debug messages if it exists)
I'd suggest grabbing a download of the unified SystemVerilog IEEE 1800-2012 SystemVerilog spec while it's still free:
It is now merged to cover both Verilog and SystemVerilog - you can see the description for block names in section 5.3.4.