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A full adder

VHDL is generally used for hardware design. This example starts with a full adder described in the adder.vhdl file:

entity adder is
  -- i0, i1 and the carry-in ci are inputs of the adder.
  -- s is the sum output, co is the carry-out.
  port (i0, i1 : in bit; ci : in bit; s : out bit; co : out bit);
end adder;

architecture rtl of adder is
begin
   --  This full-adder architecture contains two concurrent assignment.
   --  Compute the sum.
   s <= i0 xor i1 xor ci;
   --  Compute the carry.
   co <= (i0 and i1) or (i0 and ci) or (i1 and ci);
end rtl;

You can analyze this design file:

$ ghdl -a adder.vhdl

You can try to execute the adder design, but this is useless, since nothing externally visible will happen. In order to check this full adder, a testbench has to be run. This testbench is very simple, since the adder is also simple: it checks exhaustively all inputs. Note that only the behaviour is tested, timing constraints are not checked. The file adder_tb.vhdl contains the testbench for the adder:

--  A testbench has no ports.
entity adder_tb is
end adder_tb;

architecture behav of adder_tb is
   --  Declaration of the component that will be instantiated.
   component adder
     port (i0, i1 : in bit; ci : in bit; s : out bit; co : out bit);
   end component;
   --  Specifies which entity is bound with the component.
   for adder_0: adder use entity work.adder;
   signal i0, i1, ci, s, co : bit;
begin
   --  Component instantiation.
   adder_0: adder port map (i0 => i0, i1 => i1, ci => ci,
                            s => s, co => co);

   --  This process does the real job.
   process
      type pattern_type is record
         --  The inputs of the adder.
         i0, i1, ci : bit;
         --  The expected outputs of the adder.
         s, co : bit;
      end record;
      --  The patterns to apply.
      type pattern_array is array (natural range <>) of pattern_type;
      constant patterns : pattern_array :=
        (('0', '0', '0', '0', '0'),
         ('0', '0', '1', '1', '0'),
         ('0', '1', '0', '1', '0'),
         ('0', '1', '1', '0', '1'),
         ('1', '0', '0', '1', '0'),
         ('1', '0', '1', '0', '1'),
         ('1', '1', '0', '0', '1'),
         ('1', '1', '1', '1', '1'));
   begin
      --  Check each pattern.
      for i in patterns'range loop
         --  Set the inputs.
         i0 <= patterns(i).i0;
         i1 <= patterns(i).i1;
         ci <= patterns(i).ci;
         --  Wait for the results.
         wait for 1 ns;
         --  Check the outputs.
         assert s = patterns(i).s
            report "bad sum value" severity error;
         assert co = patterns(i).co
            report "bad carray out value" severity error;
      end loop;
      assert false report "end of test" severity note;
      --  Wait forever; this will finish the simulation.
      wait;
   end process;
end behav;

As usual, you should analyze the design:

$ ghdl -a adder_tb.vhdl

$ ghdl -e adder_tb

$ ./adder_tb
adder_tb.vhdl:52:7:(assertion note): end of test