New ContributorOne of the main things my hardware sorting machine is going to have to do is compare two keys, each k bits wide. To do that I need a two dimensional array of signals, with ciel( log_2( k)) rows, and with variable lengths for the rows. Can such an array be constructed in VHDL? Can it be constructed in Verilog?
Regular ContributorAre the lengths of each row static, or dynamically variable?
A 2D array is just that, a fixed array of rows of fixed size columns.
If the number of rows is static, but each is a different, fixed length, then you could define a structure. System verilog could handle this construct.
Otherwise, you need to just build a large 1D array of data, and a separate array of pointers/lengths into that array to manage the variable sized/positioned 2D elements.
Then you need to have some process (software or a complex state machine) that sets up all the pointers/lengths to manage your dynamically allocated/sized 2D array.
Note with any of these approaches you are going to get serial one word at a time access into your data structure, because it is just a big memory array of elements.
If you need simultaneous parallel access to data you have to build it with arrays of registers.
