Equivalence of bit duplication from Verilog in SystemC

[wayne911]

Hi all, 

 

I am a user of Verilog all the while, and I am currently looking into raising abstraction level of digital system design. To start off with, I am trying to convert a project written originally in Verilog into SystemC, and then try to synthesize back from SystemC into Verilog to see the synthesis performance.

 

I am currently stuck with bit duplication in SystemC. For example, in Verilog, we can do bit duplication by using the syntax below:

 

 output[15:0] = {8{d[8]}, d[7:0]}

 

I know that SystemC allow for concatenation. However, duplication using 8(d[8]) seem doesn't work in SystemC. Any advice?

[apfitch]

There isn't an equivalent operator in SystemC. However you appear to be doing sign extension, so as long as you use a signed data type it should "just work",

 

regards

Alan

[wayne911]

I am actually trying to develop a simple microprocessor from SystemC into synthesizable verilog code. The verilog code that shows the need to implement the idea of sign extension is as below:

 

 output[15:0] = word? d[15:0] : {8{d[8]}, d[7:0]};

 

To my knowledge, the datatype declaration for SystemC must be determined at compile time right? i.e. we cannot declare the datatype for d in the verilog as sc_int<8> or sc_int<16>, which is depending on the control signal "word".

Hence, in this case, how do we write in SystemC in order to get the corresponding synthesized verilog code?

[wayne911]

<post removed>

[apfitch]

I'd assume from your code that you're not actually *declaring* d based on word, in the Verilog d is presumably declared as reg [15:0].

 

You could write equivalent functionality using an if, e.g.

sc_int<16> d, output;

void make_output () { // register as an SC_METHOD
    for (int i = 0; i<15; i++)
      output[i] = d[8];
    if (word)
       output = d;
    else
       output[7:0] = d[7:0];
}

regards

Alan

 

P.S. There may be an easier way, I just can't think of it at the moment :-)

[wayne911]

Perhaps this is one of the complications when we try to use software language to model a hardware. Anyway, thanks for the help