2006 Articles

The Challenges of Synthesizing Hardware from C-Like Languages

Edwards, Stephen A.

This article presents one side of an ongoing debate on the appropriateness of C-like languages as hardware description languages. The article examines various features of C and their mapping to hardware, and makes a cogent argument that vanilla C is not the right language for hardware description if synthesis is the goal. C-like languages are far more compelling for these tasks, and one in particular, SystemC, is now widely used, as are many ad hoc variants.