MUNICH, Germany — Two tools that translate C code into hardware-description languages will be on display at DATE99 this week. C Level Design Inc. will unveil its C2VHDL offering, and Frontier Design BV will show its A/RT Builder on Windows NT platforms.
C2VHDL is a parallel product to C Level Design's previously announced C2Verilog. The latter product automatically generates Verilog code from ANSI C descriptions, while C2VHDL represents the company's entrance into the VHDL market. David Park, vice president of marketing for C Level Design (San Jose, Calif.), said the two products offer the same basic features.
Park said C2VHDL supports the entire ANSI C language, with one exception — pointers to functions. That will come in the next release, he said. "There are no class libraries," he emphasized, "just standard ANSI C."
Users can write code in a "structural" form of C, in which clocks and concurrency are implied, or in behavioral C, where the tool analyzes the code and looks for concurrent variable usage.
C2VHDL compiles C into either IEEE 1076-87 or 1076-93 language specifications, as chosen by the user. It can produce both behavioral and register-transfer-level code. "The feedback we're getting is that code is very readable, and falls in line with the style people want," Park said. C2VHDL will ship in July on Unix and Windows platforms starting at $75,000.
Unix to NT
Frontier Design (Leuven, Belgium), meanwhile, has ported its C-language translation tool, A/RT Builder, to NT. First introduced in 1998 to run under Unix, A/RT Builder now stands at version 1.5 and can be used on an NT workstation to automatically translate C-language algorithms, including fixed-point, into Verilog or VHDL descriptions.
HDL output can be synthesized into FPGA, PLD or ASIC hardware architectures using third-party synthesis tools. Output has been optimized for Synopsys Design Compiler and Exemplar's Leonardo Spectrum synthesis tools. Frontier has also ported a companion tool, A/RT Library, to run under Windows 95, 98 and NT. A/RT Library provides a set of C++ data classes and operators that encapsulate the characteristics of fixed-point arithmetic.
"System designers typically work in C to develop and simulate their designs. Once the design works, it must be carefully rewritten in an HDL, a time-consuming, cumbersome process," said Herman Beke, chief executive of Frontier Design.
A/RT Builder 1.5 can also inhibit the generation of latches that may be inferred by an HDL synthesis tool. The A/RT Builder and A/RT Library combination is priced at $20,000.
