Electronics Forum / CAD / July 2003

I play with electronics as a hobby and am used to using Circuitmaker's
spice simulations with transistor-based applications, and I've etched
a few PCBs at home. The digital arena however is confusing.

Q1) Can digital parts be simulated? I have heard of the VHDL language
and some parts like DRAMs have VHDL sources. Can these be used to
check if the DRAM part if wired correctly will work as expected?

Q2) If true, have MCUs and MPUs been emulated using VHDLs? Whats the
upper limit of VHDL simulation... the PIC MCUs? The Athlon64?

Q3) Many parts from Sharp, Philips and Cirrus do not have such VHDL
sources online. Do they sell them? Do they come in packs sold by other
vendors? Are they too complicated for VHDL simulation?

Q4) Does VHDL simulation take into account the analog portions as well
such as too high a frequency, resistors on bus lines, capacitance
effects on very closely etched boards?

Q5) Are there incompatible versions of VHDL sources in circulation I
have to watch out for when trying to gather sources for simulating a
project?

Q6) Can you have FPGAs programmed on the go and functioning all in
VHDL simulation?