Altera Hardware Description Language

Altera Hardware Description Language (AHDL) was developed by Altera Corporation to provide a high-level language for designing and describing digital circuits for their programmable logic devices. It was created in the late 1980s to simplify the design process and improve productivity for engineers working with Altera's PLDs and FPGAs. AHDL allowed designers to abstractly define circuit behavior, which could then be simulated and synthesized into hardware implementations.

Strengths of Altera Hardware Description Language include its ease of use for designing digital circuits, efficient synthesis with Altera's tools, and good integration with Altera's programmable logic devices. Weaknesses include limited portability to non-Altera hardware and a smaller user community compared to more widely adopted languages. Competitors include VHDL and Verilog, which are industry-standard hardware description languages with broader support across various hardware platforms.

An Altera Hardware Description Language expert must have strong skills in digital logic design, proficiency in writing and debugging AHDL code, and experience with Altera's Quartus II software for simulation and synthesis. They should also understand FPGA architecture, be capable of optimizing designs for performance and resource utilization, and possess knowledge of timing analysis and constraint setting within the Altera toolchain.