English

C2HLSC: Can LLMs Bridge the Software-to-Hardware Design Gap?

Hardware Architecture 2025-04-15 v1

Abstract

High Level Synthesis (HLS) tools offer rapid hardware design from C code, but their compatibility is limited by code constructs. This paper investigates Large Language Models (LLMs) for refactoring C code into HLS-compatible formats. We present several case studies by using an LLM to rewrite C code for NIST 800-22 randomness tests, a QuickSort algorithm and AES-128 into HLS-synthesizable c. The LLM iteratively transforms the C code guided by user prompts, implementing functions like streaming data and hardware-specific signals. This evaluation demonstrates the LLM's potential to assist hardware design refactoring regular C code into HLS synthesizable C code.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.09233,
  title  = {C2HLSC: Can LLMs Bridge the Software-to-Hardware Design Gap?},
  author = {Luca Collini and Siddharth Garg and Ramesh Karri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.09233},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Accepted at The First IEEE International Workshop on LLM-Aided Design

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:04:44.787Z