SystemVerilog DPI Tutorial

[The C-Layer]

Previous: Representation of packed types | Next: Examples of passing arguments

Passing Arguments: By Value or By Reference

Both imported and exported tasks and functions can have zero or more arguments passed to them. The arguments can be passed either by value or by reference (that is, through a pointer).

Passing an argument by value requires maintaining a copy of the argument inside the compiler. For this reason, it is usually limited to 'small' SystemVerilog input data.

Passing by reference, however, does not require any copying of data and DPI maintains the same basic layout of the data across the boundary. For example, a 32-bit integer remains a 32-bit integer after crossing the boundary between SystemVerilog and C regardless of the direction of data transfer. An exception when copying does occur is when an element or range of elemenets of a packed array is passed as argument (though in C parlance, this is equivalent of passing by reference).

For exported task and function, the user has the responsibility of allocating memories for any arguments passed by reference. This means the user must know the mapping between the SystemVerilog data type that the exported task or function expects and the C type that is being passed. Specifically, if you are passing an element or range of a packed array, as we saw earlier, you must know how it is representated on the C side in order to allocate memories for that argument. The header file svdpi_src.h provides these system and implementation specific information.

Direction of Arguments

SystemVerilog has a notion of direction for any task or function argument. An argument must be one of input, output or inout. However, C does not have any such notion. The conflict arises, for example, when the C side tries to modify an argument that is declared as an input on the import declaration. For this and various other reasons, there are some specific rules related to the direction of an argument.

Input Arguments

Input arguments of an imported function must be declared as a const in its C-side implementation.

Input arguments can be passed by value or by reference. As mentioned earlier, only small values are passed by value. The following data types can be passed by values. Rest are passed by reference.

  • byte, shortint, int, longint, real, shortreal
  • chandle, string
  • bit packed array of upto 32 bits.

Output and Inout Arguments

Except for open arrays, all other output and inout arguments are passed by reference. Arguments specified as open arrays (of the form my_array[]), are always passed by as variables of implementation-dependent C type of svOpenArrayHandle. Exported tasks and functions can not have open arrays as arguments.

Function Result

Function results are restricted to the following SystemVerilog types.

  • byte, shortint, int, longint, real, shortreal, chandle, string
  • packed bit arrays upto 32-bit
  • bit and logic scalar types.

The next page shows examples of how arguments are passed.

Previous: Representation of packed types | Next: Examples of passing arguments

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