Source-level compiler optimizations for high-level synthesis

Abstract

With high-level synthesis becoming the preferred method for hardware design, tools that operate on high-level programming languages and optimize hardware output are crucial for successful synthesis. In high-level synthesis, conventional programming language codes describe hardware behavior. Those codes are translated into RTL-level description by some appropriate tool. Common such tools that not only translate, but also optimize code, are programming language compilers. Compilers can make the transition from software to hardware smooth, allowing programmers to use their software skills on hardware programming, without any language compromises. Nonetheless, compilers also utilize optimization techniques to obtain a better output hardware description. In this paper, we discuss compiler issues for high-level synthesis, and present the results of several compiler transformations that can be implemented on our C language compiler front end of the CCC high-level synthesis tool. The results are taken from experiments conducted on the MPEG2 open-source codes, and prove the importance of such transformations in high-level synthesis. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).