Automated HDL Generation: Comparative Evaluation

Reconfigurable computing (RC) systems, coupling general purpose processor with reconfigurable components, offer a lot of advantages. Nevertheless, currently a designer needs both in-depth software and hardware design knowledge to develop applications for such platforms. The automated hardware generation addresses this problem. However, the success of such tools remains marginal. This paper discusses the reasons for the lack of success. It presents a quantitative and qualitative comparison of three hardware generators using the following criteria: quality of the hardware model, the supported HLL constructs, and the level of automation.