RE: [sv-cc] More information on C ABI's for those interested

Mac,

as you may be aware, the DPI does provide a "binary-compatibility" API level
which is designed explicitly to permit the same library to be used equally
well across any vendor's simulator on the same platform.

This is described in sections
        E.3.1 (binary compatibility),
        E.6.2 (duality of types: SystemVerilog types vs C types)
        E.6.4 (basic types)
etc.

The current discussion is about extending this binary compatibility capabilities
to address further types (specifically, types that are not native to C). However,
just because we're having such a discussion does *not* imply that the current
binary compatibility layer is not functional or flawed.

Joao
==============================================================================
Joao Geada, PhD Principal Engineer Verification Group
Synopsys, Inc TEL: (508) 263-8083
377 Simarano Drive, Suite 300, FAX: (508) 263-8069
Marlboro, MA 01752, USA
==============================================================================

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sv-cc@eda.org [mailto:owner-sv-cc@eda.org]On Behalf Of
> Michael McNamara
> Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 1:44 PM
> To: Warmke, Doug
> Cc: sv-cc@eda.org
> Subject: RE: [sv-cc] More information on C ABI's for those interested
>
>
>
> One of my initial challenges to the group was that it form a
> standard that one could use as a third party vendor to build a
> library which could be linked into any simulator, with out requiring
> vendor specific builds.
>
> I.E., I could provide a binary linkable library model of an ARM
> processor compiled on, say Solaris, to my partners, and they could
> link it in to any SystemVerilog simulator that ran on Solaris.
>
> I would have to provide a different library for my partners for Linux,
> and HPUX, et cetera, which I would be willing to do.
>
> What I would not be willing to do is to be required to provide the
> NCSIM Solaris library, and the VCS Solaris library, and the MTI
> Solaris library and the SpeXsim Solaris library, and the Fintronic,
> the Carbon, the ... and then all of these for Linux, and for HP, and
> for AIX, and for Windows-XP, and for...
>
> DPI will in my mind miss one of its key objectives if it ends up not
> being as good as the X library or the math library or the networking
> library; which each of these simulators can link to the same Solaris X
> library.
>
> We can do this by mandating the layout of the memory that crosses the
> boundry.
>
> If we do not mandate the layout, then we loose the interoperability.
>
> -mac
>
Received on Thu Oct 14 13:05:18 2004