High-level allocation to minimize internal hardware wastage [high-level synthesis]

Conventional synthesis algorithms perform the allocation of heterogeneous specifications, those formed by operations of different types and widths, by binding operations to functional units of their same type and width. Thus, in most of the implementations obtained, some hardware waste appears. This paper proposes an allocation algorithm able to minimize this hardware waste by fragmenting operations into their common operative kernel, which then may be executed over the same functional units. Hence, fragmented operations are executed over sets of several linked hardware resources. The implementations proposed by our algorithm need considerably smaller area than the ones proposed by conventional allocation algorithms. And due to operation fragmentation, in the datapaths produced the type, number, and width of the hardware resources are independent of the type, number, and width of the specification operations and variables.