Constant Rate Dataflow Model with Intermediate Ports for Efficient Code Synthesis with Top-Down Design and Dynamic Behavior

Abstract

This paper extends the existing synchronous dataflow (SDF) model to provide dynamic behavior and top down design with compile time deadlock detection and bounded buffer memory. We propose a new dataflow model called constant rate dataflow with intermediate ports (CRDF-IP) in which a component (or actor) can send and receive data to/from another actor through intermediate port during its execution. Since an actor can call another actor multiple times per execution, dynamic behaviors are easily specified without introducing run-time scheduler. Moreover, top-down design can be achieved by extracting a sub-actor from the top actor. This paper has proved that deadlock detection and buffer size computation can be performed at compile in CRDF-IP model. The proposed model has been implemented in a system level design platform in which H.263 video encoding algorithm is specified.