Verilog array syntax

I'm new to Verilog, and am having a lot of trouble with it. For example, I want to have an array with eight cells, each o开发者_运维知识库f which is 8 bits wide. The following doesn't work:

reg [7:0] transitionTable [0:7];
assign transitionTable[0] = 10;

neither does just doing transitionTable[0] = 10; or transitionTable[0] = 8'h10; Any ideas?

(In case it is not obvious and relevant: I want to make a finite state machine, and specify the state transitions in an array, since that seems easier than a massive case switch.)

When using assign you should declare the array as a wire instead of areg.

Since your goal is to design an FSM, there is no need to store the state values in an array. This is typically done using Verilog parameter's, a state register and a next_state with a case/endcase statement.

The following paper shows a complete example: FSM Fundamentals

If this is targeted towards synthesis:

A little beyond what was answered above, there are standard FSM coding styles that you should adhere to so the tools can perform better optimization. As described in the Cummings paper, one-hot is usually best for FPGA devices and in fact ISE(with default settings) will ignore your encoding and implement whatever it thinks will best utilize the resources on the device. This almost invariably results in a one-hot encoded FSM regardless of the state encoding you chose, provided it recognizes your FSM.

OK, so to answer your question, let's dig a little deeper into Verilog syntax.

First of all, to specify a range of bits, either do [MSB:LSB] or [LSB:MSB]. The standard is MSB:LSB but it is really up to you here, but try to be consistent.

Next, in array instantiation we have:

reg WIDTH reg_name NUMBER;

where WIDTH is the "size" of each element and NUMBER is the number of elements in the array.

So, you first want to do:

reg [7:0] transitionTable [7:0];

Then, to assign particular bytes (8 bits = 1 byte), do:

initial begin
    transitionTable[0] = 8'h10;
end

A good book to learn Verilog from is FPGA Prototyping By Verilog Examples by Pong P. Chu.