SpC: synthesis of pointers in C

Abstract

k designers may model tied software-hardware systems using a subset of C or C++, we prtient SpC, a solution to synth=ize and optimize a C model with pointers. In hardware, a pointer is not ody the address of data in memory, but it may *O reference mtitiple variablw mapped to registers, ports or wire. Pointer anrdysis is used to fid the point-to-set of each pointer in the program. b thii paper, we address the problem of synthesizing and optimizing pointers to multiple variablm and array elements. Temporary variablti are defined to optimize loads and stores by minimizing the number of live variabl=. The combinational logic can *O be reduced by encoding the pointers vdu=. A implementation using the SUE framework is presented, followed by some case studies such as the synthwis of a 2D ~CT.