A High-Level Hardware Design Methodology using C++

As device sizes shrink and the complexity of single-chip functionality increases, designers nd that they must express their ideas at higher levels of abstraction. This not only forces a greater reliance on tools to enable and implement their designs, but it also forces a move to new languages. In this paper, we propose a design methodology using C++ which allows designers to specify and re ne their designs from a purely functional level to low level RTL while remaining in a single uni ed design environment. We also identify the advantages of using C++ as the hardware description environment which spans hardware/software co-design and veri cation, IP design and reuse, testbench generation and design visualization. We use a graphics line drawing algorithm to illustrate our proposed design ow.