W. Geurts et al., QUADRATIC ZERO-ONE PROGRAMMING-BASED SYNTHESIS OF APPLICATION-SPECIFIC DATA PATHS, IEEE transactions on computer-aided design of integrated circuits and systems, 14(1), 1995, pp. 1-11
In this paper, a novel technique for the synthesis of complex multifun
ctional units is presented. Given a set of functions, the goal is to m
inimize the area cast of a unit that can execute these functions. A se
t of primitive functional units is allocated and shared between operat
ions which belong to different functions. In the presented approach, a
bipartite matching-based technique is extended with a quadratic cost
function which allows for a much more accurate modeling of interconnec
t cost compared to previous approaches. In the optimization process, f
unctional unit type selection, instance allocation, and instance assig
nment are performed simultaneously. As an extension of the technique,
a set of constraints which exclude solutions with false combinatorial
cycles will also be presented. The technique finds its main applicabil
ity in the synthesis of custom accelerator data paths in high throughp
ut signal processing applications, as required in video, image process
ing, front end speech processing, and user-end telecom. In addition, i
t can be applied in the synthesis of the data path of domain-specific
instruction set processors. Experiments show that highly optimized res
ults can be obtained within acceptable CPU times.