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Design How-To

Automatically generate C code

Arvind Ananthan, MathWorks
8/8/2011 08:07 PM EDT
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Exploration of design ideas is the foundation of any design workflow. It helps create
compelling products with unique value propositions that separate them from competition. For
engineers, idea exploration takes the form of prototyping and testing algorithm variations to
evaluate their behavioral and functional effect on the final product design. Such evaluation
narrows the set of algorithm alternatives and helps identify the one that eventually make its
way into the design of the entire system.
The speed with which an engineer can design and assess algorithm variations is critical to
efficient optimization of the design. The high level interpreted language of MATLAB is a
natural choice for engineers to express their ideas during design exploration, because it lets
them focus on algorithm behavior instead of low-level programming details.
As product development evolves from algorithm exploration to system design, integration,
and implementation on hardware, the design specifications are typically translated by hand
into a language such as C or C++. The C programming language has broad popularity and is
widely accepted as the language of choice for many development phases including system
design, application software development, and embedded software implementation.

Why translate MATLAB to C/C++?

Often engineers translate MATLAB algorithms to C/C++ code to create standalone software
prototypes, integrate MATLAB algorithms with other software written in C/C++, or deliver
specifications to embedded software engineers for implementation. Generating C
automatically (and nearly instantaneously) from MATLAB speeds design exploration and
product development iterations.
Why is manual conversion of MATLAB to C difficult?
The pitfalls of manual translation stem from differences in the programming paradigms of
MATLAB and C. MATLAB has a succinct syntax and native data types for the vector and
matrix processing operations used in embedded signal processing and control algorithms.
The equivalent C code requires multiple loops to process individual data samples, resulting

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in many lines of C code for a single line of MATLAB code. Equally important, the polymorphic
and dynamically typed behavior that makes MATLAB flexible and easy to use is not readily
accessible in the more statically typed C language without detailed programming. These
differences make manual translation a time-consuming and complex process.
Manual translation also results in multiple copies of the same algorithm written in different
languages. The engineer must verify that these copies remain equivalent throughout multiple
design iterations. The cost of verifying and updating revisions to accommodate requirement
changes quickly becomes prohibitive, often resulting in errors and a design that diverges
from the original specification.
Benefits of Automatic Translation
Automating translation of MATLAB code to C code overcomes most, if not all, of the
problems associated with manual translation. Automatic MATLAB-to-C code generation
offers the following advantages:
Design engineers spend more time innovating and tuning high-level algorithms in
MATLAB rather than writing and debugging low-level C code
The equivalence of MATLAB algorithms and generated C code is easily maintained
during design iterations
C code is produced much faster and is free of the errors that are frequently introduced
by hand coding

The automatic translation workflow from MATLAB allows engineers to maintain one truth
and elaborate it directly within MATLAB to incorporate implementation details such as
specifying data types and sizes of input and output variables. Design iterations become
easier because engineers continue to use the interactive debugging and visualization
capabilities in MATLAB throughout the process. The significant cost of producing and
verifying hand-written C code can be eliminated for common design workflow uses such as
prototyping algorithms as standalone executables, integrating algorithms as reusable
libraries, and accelerating parts of the algorithms execution in MATLAB.

Three-Step Workflow
Translating MATLAB code to C code (automatically or by hand) involves making decisions on
multiple implementation details in the algorithm such as data type management, fixed-point
math support, and static/dynamic memory allocation. Choices made by engineers when
working with these details help satisfy various implementation requirements and enable the
engineers to manage tradeoffs between reducing memory footprint and improving processor
utilization or performance.
As an automatic MATLAB to C code generation tool, MATLAB Coder enables engineers to
specify these requirements and make implementation decisions directly within MATLAB. This
makes it easier to maintain one reference design and iterate on the evolving design in

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MATLAB.
The following sections of this article describe the recommended three-step workflow that
enables engineers to specify the implementation details that are needed to convert their
MATLAB algorithms into the desired C code and verify the resulting code against their
original MATLAB specification. This workflow is illustrated in the figure below.

Preparing Code: Introducing Implementation Details

The first step in the code generation process is to prepare your MATLAB algorithms by
introducing implementation details and ensuring your code is using the subset of the
MATLAB language that is supported for code generation. This subset includes basic
operators, numerical computations, standard programming constructs, and hundreds of
built-in functions.
Implementation details are required to prepare MATLAB code for code generation because
MATLAB is polymorphicthe behavior of its operators and functions adapts to the nature of
the input arguments they are operating upon.
A result that can be achieved with a few lines of MATLAB may require tens or hundreds of
lines of C code. For example, a simple function that multiplies two inputs of any size and data
type is a single line of MATLAB code. When coding this in C, the engineer must take into
account the size and data types of the inputs as well as whether they are real or complex.
This is illustrated in the figure below.

Polymorphism is one reason that MATLAB is a versatile and convenient language for
exploring design ideas. When writing C code by hand or generating it with MATLAB Coder,
however, engineers must explicitly specify the input sizes and data types for their algorithms.
In MATLAB Coder, this can be done through the command line interface or the project UI as
shown below.

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For the same reason, certain local variables within the algorithm code in MATLAB have to be
pre-allocated so the code generation engine knows the sizes and the data types of the
variables to be used in the generated code.
Another key step in the preparation process is to check if the MATLAB algorithm code uses
only those language features and constructs that support code generation. The product
documentation lists all supported functions and language features.
Test and Verify
In the traditional workflow, verifying that the hand-written C/C++ code functionally matches
the original MATLAB algorithms is a very important and challenging task. Two common
approaches are used to perform this functional verification:
Maintain separate file-based test benches, and compare the test results for the
MATLAB and C implementations
Integrate the hand-written C code using the MEX API specification so that it may be
directly called from within MATLAB, and use test benches in MATLAB to exercise the
MEX function and verify its result
While the latter approach is more efficient and streamlined, the task of writing a MEX
wrapper function that passes data between MATLAB and the C code can be tedious and
error-prone. If care is not taken to allocate memory properly and perform proper error
checking in the MEX wrapper code, then memory integrity violations can occur during the
MEX function execution in MATLAB, potentially causing unpredictable results or a crash.
With the automated workflow, the MEX function can be automatically generated from the
MATLAB algorithm that has been prepared for code generation. Engineers can use this step
to determine if the modifications they made to the MATLAB code in preparation for code
generation (as described in the previous section) were sufficient. Once the MEX function is

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successfully generated (indicating the preparation step was successful), it can be used to
catch any potential design issues that might show up in the compiled code, such as
unauthorized memory access or numerical inaccuracies introduced by the C/C++ compiler.
This functional verification step confirms that the MATLAB code is finally ready for C source
code generation.
Generate MEX Functions or C Code
Because the automatically generated MEX functions are compiled versions of MATLAB
algorithms, in some cases they may execute faster in MATLAB than the original algorithms,
depending on the nature of the algorithms implemented. After functionally verifying that the
MEX functions are equivalent to their source MATLAB algorithms, engineers can turn off
memory integrity checks and other options that may slow execution and then regenerate
MEX functions that are further optimized for performance. These functions can then be used
in place of the original MATLAB algorithms to accelerate execution.
At this point, engineers may also generate C source code (as .c, .cpp, and .h files) that can
then be compiled into a library or a standalone executable, or integrated into other
development projects written in C/C++. The code produced by MATLAB Coder is commented
and readable, so that it can be readily understood. The generated code can be optimized by
modifying the MATLAB source code or by adjusting code generation settings that effect
readability or performance.
Summary
Automatically generating readable and portable C code from your MATLAB algorithms is an
easy and efficient way to speed up the system design to implementation workflow.
Preparation of the code requires introducing implementation requirements, pre-allocating
variables, and using the supported subset of the MATLAB language. After assessing the
generated C code, MATLAB algorithms can be refined, and code can be regenerated in
minutes. The results of the compiled code can be verified against the original golden
reference MATLAB code. This quick iteration cycle enables engineers to converge on the
desired C implementation while letting them work in MATLAB longer. The result is a sharper
focus on more efficient and optimized algorithm creation and less time spent on
programming details in a lower level language.
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