Reconfigurable Design Automation by High-Level Exploration

This paper describes a novel approach for design automation of general-purpose reconfigurable computing applications, which combines design space exploration with transformation-based high-level feedback of performance results obtained from a detailed implementation. This approach enhances effectiveness of high-level exploration by using performance estimates to guide the selection of applicable transformations.The impact of the transformations on metrics such as speed and area is pre-characterised, so that appropriate transformations likely to contribute to meeting design requirements are selected. A prototype system supporting this approach has been developed, and promising results have been obtained.