Hardware descriptive language (HDL) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices allow designers to quickly develop and simulate a sophisticated digital circuit, realize it on a prototyping device, and verify the operation of its physical implementation. This text for a digital system design course introduces concepts and techniques of the HDL Verilog and FPGAs to designers through a series of hands-on experiments. The main focus of the book is on the effective derivation of hardware rather than the syntax of HDL. Instead of explaining every language construct, the book focus on a small synthesizable subset and uses about a dozen code templates to provide the skeletons of various types of circuits. Although the major goal of the book is to teach readers how to develop software-independent and device-neutral HDL codes, the book uses a software package and a prototyping board to synthesize and implement the design examples. The software used, a Web version of the Xilinx ISE package, is available free online. The book is intended to be used with several entry-level FPGA prototyping boards manufactured by Digilent, Inc. Readers should have a basic knowledge of digital systems and prior exposure to assembly language programming. Chu teaches in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cleveland State University. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)