A. Mujumdar et al., INCORPORATING PERFORMANCE AND TESTABILITY CONSTRAINTS DURING BINDING IN HIGH-LEVEL SYNTHESIS, IEEE transactions on computer-aided design of integrated circuits and systems, 15(10), 1996, pp. 1212-1225
Module and register binding during high-level synthesis is one of the
most important steps in generating an RTL design from a behavioral des
cription, The binding phase determines the structure of the final desi
gn, and hence issues related to area, performance and testability of t
he RTL design have to be addressed in this step. In this paper, we pre
sent algorithms for module and register binding which generate RTL des
igns having high performance and/or high testability, The binding prob
lem is decomposed into a sequence of subproblems, each of which is mod
eled as a minimum-cost network flow problem. The relative impact of th
e possible bindings Is expressed in terms of the costs associated with
the edges of the network. The model is simple and can be solved quick
ly to obtain a low cost flow solution, Putting together the solutions
to the subproblems gives low cost bindings. We also propose cost funct
ions that can be used with varying emphasis on delay and testing, The
results demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm; the final desi
gns produced by the algorithms require a smaller clock cycle or are ea
sier to test as compared to designs generated without the performance
or testability constraints.