chipsalliance / chipsalliance/Surelog

Convert structs into additional ports

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Dominant language
C++
Stars
475
Forks
90
Avg merge
1h 39m
Merged PRs (30d)
37

Description

Currently if I write SystemVerilog that uses packed struct types for e.g.: a module input, Surelog will compile that to an input with bitwidth equal to the width of the packed struct, and struct field accesses will become part selects of the bitvector.

An alternative, which may often be easier to understand and process, is to compile the struct fields to multiple inputs/outputs. This would happen recursively and terminate at types that are not struct types (non-struct types would be handled the same way structs currently are). It would be an optional and likely non-default mode of elaboration.

Surelog should avoid applying this transformation to any blackboxed modules as well as the top level module, so that the output of compilation can still be connected to other designs that may not have had this transformation applied. It might also be reasonable to optionally automatically generate wrapper modules around any blackboxed modules when this is enabled, so that the wrapper module can be transformed in this way even though the blackboxed one is not.

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
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Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by locating Surelog's elaboration handling for packed structs, then define the optional mode's boundaries for blackboxed and top-level modules and determine how completion would be tested.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
compilers
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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