A scheduling algorithm for multiport memory minimization in datapath synthesis

In this paper, we present a new scheduling algorithm that generates area-efficient register transfer level datapaths with multiport memories. The proposed scheduling algorithm assigns an operation to a specific control step such that maximal sharing of functional units can be achieved with minimal number of memory ports, while satisfying given constraints. We propose a measure of multiport memory cost, MAV (Multiple Access Variable) which is defined as a variable accessed at several control steps, and overall memory cost is reduced by equally distributing the MAVs throughout all the control steps. When compared with previous approaches for several benchmarks available from the literature, the proposed algorithm generates the datapaths with less memory modules and interconnection structures by reflecting the memory cost in the scheduling process.