Architecture Declarations

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The architecture declaration describes the operation of the component. There can be multiple architectures described for each entity. However, for each instantiation of the entity, one of the possibly several architectures must be selected.

In the above example, the declaration starts with the keyword ARCHITECTURE followed by the name of the architecture (e.g. behavior1) and the name of the entity with which the architecture is associated. The keyword BEGIN marks the beginning of the architecture body which may include concurrent signal assignment statements and processes. Although not shown above, any signals that are used internally in the architecture description but are not found in the entity's ports are declared before the BEGIN statement of the architecture body. The keyword END marks the end of the architecture declaration.