HDL is Hardware Description Language.
It was originally designed just as a simulation tool. However, it soon became used for synthesis as well. That is, you can write a design in terms of a complicated logic equation for example and there are tools which can turn it into a version made of AND/OR gates, and then all the way down to individual transistors including the silicon dimensions.
I do have a good simulator, but it is installed in my Linux partition and I am in windows atm, when I next boot into linux ill find the program name.
VHDL doesn't just have to simulate hardware.
At work we have a FPGA:VHDL motor-controller and to "test-bench" it we have a brushlessDC machine written in VHDL as well as the analogue current-loop, bloody good as well