Path-based scheduling in a hardware compiler

Abstract

Hardware acceleration uses hardware to perform some software functions faster than it is possible on a processor. This paper proposes to optimize hardware acceleration using path-based scheduling algorithms derived from dataflow static scheduling, and from control-flow state machines. These techniques are applied to the MIPS-to-Verilog (M2V) compiler, which translates blocks of MIPS machine code into a hardware design represented in Verilog for reconfigurable platforms. The simulation results demonstrate a factor of 22 in performance improvement for simple self-looped basic blocks over the base compiler.