To help modeling of memory, Verilog provides support for two dimensions arrays. Behavioral models of memories are modeled by declaring an array of register variables; any word in the array may be accessed using an index into the array. A temporary variable is required to access a discrete bit within the array.

reg [wordsize:0] array_name [0:arraysize]

reg [7:0] my_memory [0:255];

Here [7:0] is the memory width and [0:255] is the memory depth with the following parameters:

• Width : 8 bits, little endian
• Depth : 256, address 0 corresponds to location 0 in the array.

my_memory[address] = data_in;

data_out = my_memory[address];

Sometimes there may be need to read just one bit. Unfortunately Verilog does not allow to read or write only one bit: the workaround for such a problem is as shown below.

data_out = my_memory[address];

data_out_it_0 = data_out[0];

A memory array may be initialized by reading memory pattern file from disk and storing it on the memory array. To do this, we use system tasks $readmemb and $readmemh. $readmemb is used for binary representation of memory content and $readmemh for hex representation.

$readmemh("file_name",mem_array,start_addr,stop_addr);

Note : start_addr and stop_addr are optional.

 1 module  memory();
 2 reg [7:0] my_memory [0:255];
 3 
 4 initial begin
 5  $readmemh("memory.list", my_memory);
 6 end
 7 endmodule

 1 //Comments are allowed 
 2 1100_1100   // This is first address i.e 8'h00
 3 1010_1010   // This is second address i.e 8'h01
 4 @ 55        // Jump to new address 8'h55
 5 0101_1010   // This is address 8'h55
 6 0110_1001   // This is address 8'h56

$readmemh system task can also be used for reading testbench vectors. I will cover this in detail in the test bench section ... when I find time.

Refer to the examples section for more details on different types of memories.

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Deepak Kumar Tala - All rights reserved

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