Clock-driven performance optimization in interactive behavioral synthesis

In interactive behavioral synthesis, the designer can control the design process at every stage, including modifying the schedule of the design to improve its performance. In this paper, we present a methodology for performance optimization in interactive behavioral synthesis. Also proposed are several quality metrics and hints that can assist the user in utilizing the proposed methodology. When the user is optimizing the performance of the design, one important decision is the selection of a clock period. To facilitate clock selection by the user, we have developed an algorithm to estimate the effect of different clock periods on the execution time of the design. We have tested our methodology on several benchmarks. The experimental results support the proposed methodology by demonstrating an average improvement of 46.2% in design performance.