A Brief History of Verilog

The history of the Verilog HDL goes back to the 1980s, when a company called Gateway Design Automation developed a logic simulator, Verilog-XL, and with it a hardware description language.

Cadence Design Systems acquired Gateway in 1989, and with it the rights to the language and the simulator. In 1990, Cadence put the language (but not the simulator) into the public domain, with the intention that it should become a standard, non-proprietary language.

The Verilog HDL is now maintained by a non profit making organisation, Open Verilog International (OVI). OVI had the task of taking the language through the IEEE standardisation procedure.

In December 1995 Verilog HDL became IEEE Std. 1364-1995. Work is currently under way in order to define analog extensions to the Verilog language.

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