Report Number: CSL-TR-90-419
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: HardwareC -- A Language for Hardware Design (Version 2.0)
Author: Ku, David
Author: DeMicheli, Giovanni
Date: April 1990
Abstract: High-level synthesis is the transformation from a behavioral level specification of hardware, through a series of optimizations and translations, to an implementation in terms of logic gates and registers. The success of a high-level synthesis system is heavily dependent on how effectively the high-level language captures the ideas of the designer in a simple and understandable way. Furthermore, as system-level issues such as communication protocols and design partitioning dominate the design process, the ability to specify constraints on the timing requirements and resource utilization of a design is necessary to ensure that the design can integrate with the rest of the system. In this paper, a hardware description language called HardwareC is presented. HardwareC supports both declarative and procedural semantics, has a C-like syntax, and is extended with notion of concurrent processes, message passing, timing constraints via tagging, resource constraints, explicit instantiation of models, and template models. The language is used as the input to the Hercules High-level Synthesis System.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/90/419/CSL-TR-90-419.pdf