Looking at books on VHDL and CAN bus. My Xilinx Spartan 6 board arrived a couple of days ago and now I need to get to the point where I can make real use of it. I’ve been looking for books to give me more depth in VHDL and a bit more context on CAN and here’s what I’ve come up with…

I’ve found two basic types of books in this area. There are those aimed at  people with little or no digital design experience that spend lots of time explaining the basics of digital logic design and synchronous systems and those that work at taking someone with significant digital design experience and getting them up to speed on how to realize designs in VHDL.

I’ve done enough digital design in SSI/MSI/PALs back when I was doing that sort of thing for work that I’m looking for the latter sort of books and my list below reflects that.

Seems like a decent book on logic synthesis in VHDL. Less expensive than the other broad based book I located but seems a bit narrower in scope.

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This book looks more comprehensive than the one above, but it is also more than twice as expensive. I’m thinking that I may get VHDL for Logic Synthesis for now and buy VHDL for Engineers later if I find I’m looking for more information.

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This looks like the best CAN bus book I’ve seen so far. Another rather expensive text, but if it can give me a decent feel for how to best use the facilities CAN provides then it will be worth the money.

I can see a number of different ways to implement a protocol using the functionality that CAN makes avaialable but getting advice on what has worked for others will make it more likely that my first shot is sensible and effective.

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I ran across this book after I saw the earlier ones (and in the context of the following volume that appears to provide more advances style and implementation approaches). I suspect this is likely a decent book…perhaps with more introductory digital design content than I’d generally prefer though. I may look closer at this one at some point.

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I find myself frequently looking for books that go beyond the basics of syntax and function to discuss best practices and effective usage (and books with ‘effective’ in the title often seem to offer this sort of advice). This looks like an interesting book on the VHDL front from that perspective. I’ll likely buy one of the more general volumes above and read it through first, but once I’ve covered the basics, I’ll likely wind up here to try to refine my understanding and usage.