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Ang Zhi Ping
Ang Zhi Ping

Reputation: 187

Automated tracing use of variables within source code

I'm working with a set of speech processing routines (written in C) meant to be compiled with the mex command on MATLAB. There is this C-function which I'm interested in accelerating using FPGA.

The hardware takes in specified input parameters through input ports, the rest of the inputs as constants to be hard coded, and passes a particular variable some where within the C-function, say foo, to the output port.

I am interested in tracing the computation graph (unsure if this is the right term to use) of foo. i.e. how foo relates to intermediate computed variables, which in turn eventually depends on input parameters and hard coded constants. This is to allow me to flatten the logic so they can be coded using a hardware description language, as well as remove irrevelant logic which does not affect the value of foo. The catch is that some intermediate variables are global, therefore tracing is a headache.

Is there an automated tool which analyzes a given set of C headers and source files and provide a means of tracing how a specified variable is altered, with some kind of dependency graph of all variables used?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 224

Answers (1)

Seth
Seth

Reputation: 2667

I think what you are looking for is a tool to do value analysis.

Among the tools available to do this, I think Code Surfer is probably the best out there. Of course, it is also quite expensive but if you are a student, they do have an academic license program. On the open-source side, Frama-C can also do this in a more limited fashion and has a much, much steeper learning curve. But it is free and will get you where you want to go.

Upvotes: 1

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