Loop-oriented metrics for exploring an application-specific architecture design-space

Since ASIPs were introduced in the HW/SW architecture design space, application partitioning has become more complex. Designers have more ways to accelerate applications: with ASIPs of various kinds or with dedicated hardware modules. In this paper, we present loop-oriented metrics that will be used during design-space exploration for the partitioning process of C-based designs. These metrics help designers determine which aspect of loop iterations, between data memory accesses and ALU/Control operations, offers more acceleration potential. We implemented a profiler-scheduler LOOPPROF that gathers the metrics. Our tool also helps determine which optimization techniques such as data reuse are suitable for the considered code segments. We demonstrate the use of our tool by exploring the acceleration possibilities of the ELA Deinterlacer, a video processing algorithm.