What is the future of Verilog in VLSI industry, will it be taken over by system verilog, major differences between these two?

Verilog has been a widely used hardware description language (HDL) in the VLSI industry for several decades. While SystemVerilog has gained popularity as an extension of Verilog, it is important to note that Verilog continues to be widely used and supported in the industry. Both Verilog and SystemVerilog have their own significance and applications. Here are some insights on the future of Verilog and the major differences between Verilog and SystemVerilog:

Future of Verilog in the VLSI industry:

1. Continued Usage: Verilog is expected to continue being used extensively in the VLSI industry due to its maturity, stability, and large existing codebase.
2. Legacy Designs: Many existing designs and intellectual property (IP) cores are written in Verilog, making it necessary to maintain and support Verilog-based designs.
3. Compatibility: SystemVerilog is an extension of Verilog, and most SystemVerilog constructs are compatible with Verilog. Therefore, Verilog knowledge is still valuable when working with SystemVerilog designs.
4. Tool Support: Verilog is supported by a wide range of industry-standard EDA (Electronic Design Automation) tools, which ensures its continued usage and support.

Major differences between Verilog and SystemVerilog:

1. Hardware Description Capabilities: SystemVerilog introduces additional features such as enhanced data types, structs, interfaces, and enumerated data types, which provide more advanced and flexible hardware description capabilities compared to Verilog.
2. Verification Capabilities: SystemVerilog includes advanced verification features such as constrained randomization, coverage-driven verification, assertions, and functional coverage, which enable more efficient and comprehensive verification of designs.
3. Design Constructs: SystemVerilog includes several new design constructs like class-based design, dynamic arrays, and associative arrays, which allow for more modular and reusable design structures.
4. Direct Programming Capabilities: SystemVerilog provides direct programming capabilities by incorporating features of the C programming language, including task and function calls, loops, and conditional statements, making it easier to write complex testbenches and verification environments.

While SystemVerilog offers additional capabilities and advanced features, Verilog remains a widely used and supported HDL. Verilog expertise is still valuable in the industry, and many design projects continue to be implemented in Verilog. It is important for VLSI engineers to have a good understanding of both Verilog and SystemVerilog to effectively work on a wide range of design projects and leverage the advantages of each language.