Source code transformation to improve conditional hardware reuse

Abstract

The computations of a system whose behavior varies depending on the value of some conditions may present a property called mutual exclusiveness. This property, responsible for the degree of conditional reuse achievable after a high-level synthesis (HLS) process, is intrinsic to the behavior. But sometimes it is only partially reflected in the actual description written by a designer, leading to worse implementations. Our algorithm explores in an efficient manner the real mutual exclusiveness of the behavior, independently of the description style. It performs a transformation of the input description that allows the HLS tools to obtain better circuits in terms of the area saving due to conditional reuse.