Question

The memory spaces owned and allocated by the foreign code and SystemVerilog code are disjoined. Each side is responsible for its own allocated memory. Specifically, an imported function shall not free the memory allocated by SystemVerilog code (or the SystemVerilog compiler) nor expect SystemVerilog code to free the memory allocated by the foreign code (or the foreign compiler). This does not exclude scenarios where foreign code allocates a block of memory, then passes a handle (i.e., a pointer) to that block to SystemVerilog code, which in turn calls an imported function (e.g. C standard function free) which directly or indirectly frees that block.

NOTE—In this last scenario, a block of memory is allocated and freed in the foreign code, even when the standard functions malloc and free are called directly from SystemVerilog code.