Memory allocation and mapping in high-level synthesis - An integrated approach

Abstract

With the increasing design complexity and performance requirement, data arrays in behavioral specification are usually mapped to memories in behavioral synthesis. This paper describes a new algorithm that overcomes two limitations of the previous works on the problem of memory-allocation and array-mapping to memories. Specifically, its key features are a tight link to the scheduling effect, which was totally or partially ignored by the existing memory synthesis systems, and supporting nonuniform access speeds among the ports of memories, which greatly diversify the possible (practical) memory configurations. Experimental data on a set of benchmark filter designs are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed exploration strategy in finding globally best memory configurations.