Utilizing voltage-frequency islands in C-to-RTL synthesis for streaming applications

Abstract

Automatic C-to-RTL (C2RTL) synthesis can greatly benefit hardware design for streaming applications. However, stringent through-put/area constraints, especially the demand for power optimization at the system level is rather challenging for existing C2RTL synthesis tools. This paper considers a power-aware C2RTL framework using voltage-frequency islands (VFIs) to address these challenges. Given the throughput, area, and power constraints, an MILP-based approach is introduced to synthesize C-code into an RTL design by simultaneously considering three design knobs, i.e., partition, parallelization, and VFI assignment to get the global optimal solution. A heuristic solution is also discussed to deal with the scalability challenge facing the MILP formulation. Experimental results based on four well known multimedia applications demonstrate the effectiveness of both solutions.