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language:expressions [2023/09/06 10:05] – [External circuit functions] rajitlanguage:expressions [2025/04/21 17:39] (current) – [Structure references] rajit
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    * The query expression ''(e ? e1 : e2)'' behaves like the C operator. The result is ''e1'' if ''e'' is true, and ''e2'' otherwise.    * The query expression ''(e ? e1 : e2)'' behaves like the C operator. The result is ''e1'' if ''e'' is true, and ''e2'' otherwise.
    * Logical shift operators are ''<<'' (left shift),  ''>>'' (logical right shift), and the arithmetic right shift operator ''>>>''.    * Logical shift operators are ''<<'' (left shift),  ''>>'' (logical right shift), and the arithmetic right shift operator ''>>>''.
-   * Bit operations: For a variable ''x'', the value ''x{b..a}'' extracts bits ''b'' through ''a'' (both included, with ''b'' at least ''a''). Both ''b'' and ''a'' must be constants (or computed by parameters, i.e. constants after expansion). The syntax ''x{a}'' is syntactic sugar for ''x{a..a}'', and extracts one bit from ''x''.+   * Bit operations: For a variable ''x'', the value ''x{b..a}'' extracts bits ''b'' through ''a'' (both included, with ''b'' at least ''a''). Both ''b'' and ''a'' must be constants (or computed by parameters, i.e. constants after expansion). The syntax ''x{a}'' is syntactic sugar for ''x{a..a}'', and extracts one bit from ''x''. Note that ''b'' must be at least ''a''; for example ''x{3..2}'' corresponds to two bits, but ''x{2..3}'' is not a valid reference.
    * Concatenation: Given a set of expressions, ''{e1,e2,e3,...,eN}'' concatenates the bits of the expressions to form a wide result.    * Concatenation: Given a set of expressions, ''{e1,e2,e3,...,eN}'' concatenates the bits of the expressions to form a wide result.
  
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    * ''bool(x)'': ''x'' must be an integer expression. This returns false if the integer is zero, and true otherwise.    * ''bool(x)'': ''x'' must be an integer expression. This returns false if the integer is zero, and true otherwise.
  
 +Syntactic replication is also supported for the operators ''&'', ''|'', ''^'', ''+'', and ''*''. This means the following expression is valid
 +<code act>
 +  (+ i : 3 : p[i] + 2*i)
 +</code>
 +and is equivalent to
 +<code act>
 +  p[0] + 2*0 + p[1] + 2*1 + p[2] + 2*2
 +</code>
  
 ===== Parameters and constant expressions ===== ===== Parameters and constant expressions =====
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 ===== Expressions in CHP ===== ===== Expressions in CHP =====
  
-The same expression syntax is also used in the ''chp'' and ''dataflow'' sub-languages. Once again, constant expressions are simplified as above. However, expressions can also include variables that are determined at run-time rather than expansion time (i.e. when the circuit is executing the specified computation.) In this case, we need rules to determine the bit-width of an expression. The rules are as follows:+The same expression syntax is also used in the ''chp'' and ''dataflow'' sub-languages. Once again, constant expressions are simplified as above. However, expressions can also include variables that are determined at run-time rather than expansion time (i.e. when the circuit is executing the specified computation.) In this case, we need rules to determine the bit-width of an expression.  
 + 
 +==== Bit-width rules ==== 
 + 
 +The rules that are used to determine the bit-width of an expression involving circuit variables are as follows:
  
    * Each variable has the bit-width specified by its type.    * Each variable has the bit-width specified by its type.
-   * A constant uses the minimum number of bits needed to represent it. Note that a negative constant is assumed to be a two's complement value, an its bit-width is determined in the same way.+   * A constant uses the minimum number of bits needed to represent it. Note that a negative constant is assumed to be a two's complement value, an its bit-width is determined in the same way. If you are unsure about what is going to happen and want to control the bit-width of a constant, ''int(const, width)'' can be used. Be careful about is negative constants, since the ''int(.)'' operation will zero-extend a value and not sign-extend it.
    * For unary operators, the bit-width of the result is the same as the bit-width of the argument    * For unary operators, the bit-width of the result is the same as the bit-width of the argument
    * For binary operators and ternary operators where the result is an integer, let //left// be the bit-width of the left-hand side of the operator, and //right// be the bit-width of the right hand side. There are six categories of result bit-widths:    * For binary operators and ternary operators where the result is an integer, let //left// be the bit-width of the left-hand side of the operator, and //right// be the bit-width of the right hand side. There are six categories of result bit-widths:
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      - //left// + 2^//right// - 1      - //left// + 2^//right// - 1
         * left shift ''<<''         * left shift ''<<''
-  * For concatenation, the bit-width is the sum of all the components. For the bitfield extraction, the bitwidth is determined by the number of bits extracted.+  * For concatenation, the bit-width is the sum of all the components.  
 +  * For bitfield extraction, the bitwidth is determined by the number of bits extracted.
  
 +==== Idiosyncrasies ====
 +
 +While these bit-width rules are nice because you never lose bits, they can have some unexpected consequences. One of the not-so-nice effects of these rules is that, technically, addition is no longer associative in general! For example, consider the following two different assignment statements:
 +
 +<code act>
 +int<2> a;
 +int<3> b;
 +int<4> c;
 +...
 +chp {
 +   ...
 +   x := (a + b) + c;
 +   y := a + (b + c);
 +   ...
 +}
 +</code>
 +
 +Applying the bit-width rules, the expression ''(a+b) + c'' has bit-width 5, whereas ''a + (b + c)'' has bit-width 6. While this does not have any consequences in this particular example, it could become problematic if the bitwise complement operator is used, or in the case where this expression needs to be negated (since subtraction is essentially taking the two's complement and then adding, which includes the bitwise complement operator).
 +
 +Another strange example is:
 +
 +<code act>
 +...
 +chp {
 +   ...
 +   x := x - 1;
 +   y := y + (-1);
 +   ...
 +}
 +</code>
 +
 +Now the right hand side of the first assignment takes ''x'' and ''1'' and does the subtraction that was expected. The second assignment, on the other hand, takes the bit-pattern for ''-1'' (this turns out to be ''1''), and adds it to ''y''! In other words, ''x-1'' and ''x+(-1)'' are not the same because of the way the bit-width rules operate. If you have any doubts, the ''int(...)'' operator can be used to specify the bit-width.
 +
 +==== Conversion from/to integer to/from pure structures ====
 +
 +A [[language:types2:data#pure_structure|pure structure]] in ACT is a user-defined type that only contains integers and boolean valued variables. This can be interpreted as a collection of bits, where the number of bits is the sum of all the components of the pure structure. The expression syntax allows conversions between pure structures and integers, and vice versa, as in the example below.
 +<code act>
 +  mystructname s;
 +  int<8> x;
 +  ...
 +  chp {
 +    ...
 +    x := int(s);
 +    s := mystructname(x)
 +    ...
 +    }
 +</code>
 +In this example, ''int(s)'' converts the pure structure into an integer with the appropriate bit-width. Note that the assignment may discard bits (if the bits needed exceeds 8) or zero-pad the result (if the bits needed is less than 8).
 +The expression "mystructname(x)" does the opposite. 
 +
 +When a structure has multiple fields, ACT packs them into an integer in left-to-right field order. So, for example, the structure
 +
 +<code act>
 +deftype mystruct (int<4> a; bool b; int<3> c) { }
 +</code>
 +
 +would have the ''a'' field as the highest order bits, followed by ''b'' and then ''c''.  Conversion to a structure from an integer follows the same unpacking convention.
 ===== Functions ===== ===== Functions =====
  
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   }   }
 } }
 +</code>
 +
 +===== Structure references =====
 +
 +Functions can return [[language:types2:data#pure_structures|pure structures]], and pure structures can have function methods. The expression syntax is rich enough to support these features. As an illustrative example, consider the following:
 +
 +<code act>
 +deftype mystruct (int a, b)
 +{
 +     methods {
 +          function getsum() : int
 +          {
 +              chp {
 +                  self := a + b
 +              }
 +         }
 +         function addone() : mystruct
 +         {
 +            chp {
 +                self.a := a + 1;
 +                self.b := b + 1
 +             }
 +         }
 +    }
 +}
 +</code>
 +
 +We can have expressions of the following form:
 +
 +<code act>
 +mystruct s;
 +int a;
 +...
 +chp {
 +   ...
 +   a := s.addone().getsum();
 +   ...
 +} 
 </code> </code>
  
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 An example of file I/O implemented with external functions can be found in the ''actsim'' [[https://github.com/asyncvlsi/actsim|git repository]] in the ''simlib/'' directory. An example of file I/O implemented with external functions can be found in the ''actsim'' [[https://github.com/asyncvlsi/actsim|git repository]] in the ''simlib/'' directory.
 +
 +===== Operator Precedence =====
 +
 +The operators have the following precedence, from the highest to lowest:
 +   - ''~'', ''!''
 +   - ''*'', ''/'', ''%''
 +   - ''+'', ''-''
 +   - ''<<'', ''>>'', ''>>>'', ''<'', ''>'', ''<='', ''>='', ''='', ''!=''
 +   - ''&''
 +   - ''^''
 +   - ''|''
 +   - ''?''
  
language/expressions.1693994747.txt.gz · Last modified: by rajit
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