[Cryptech Tech] Keeping magic numbers in sync between Verilog and C

[Rob Austein]

At Wed, 30 Sep 2015 23:02:25 +0300, Pavel Shatov wrote:
> 
> I see, that right now every core has a wrapper, and this wrapper 
> contains an array of localparams. Many of these localparams are repeated 
> in different cores, since we decided, that similar cores should have 
> similar address space layout. I think, an elegant solution will be to 
> move all magic localparams into a separate .v file. This file will 
> contain only localparams, and every core will then `include this .v file 
> and get access to magic constants.

That would be fine.  I was trying to avoid forcing that model on the
Verilog programmers, but it's certainly simpler overall.

> Converting .v file with localparams into .h file with #defines in 
> another question. I faced the same problem several times in previous 
> projects, but I still don't have any good enough solution. The first 
> annoying thing is that numbers in Verilog are like 16'hABCD and like 
> 0xABCD in C. I personally have a crazy PHP script, that can do the 
> trick, but I won't share it. In Russia we have a law, that prohibits 
> distribution of explicit adult content, you know.

If we're willing to put up with this being a #include / `include file,
the obvious answer is a minor variation on this: write the constants
as input to a script in some convenient format, have that script emit
both .h and .v output.

In this case I'd probably just write a Python class that understands
Verilog integer constant syntax, it's not that complicated.