The Challenges of Synthesizing Hardware From C-Like Languages

The main reason people have proposed C-like languages for hardware synthesis is familiarity. Proponents claim that by synthesizing hardware from C, the authors can effectively turn every C programmer into a hardware designer. Another common motivation is hardware-software codesign: designers often implement today's systems as a mix of hardware and software, and it's often unclear at the outset which portions can be hardware and which can be software. The claim is that using a single language for both simplifies the migration task.