Benchmarking for high-level synthesis

This paper discusses issues in benchmarking for synthesis, and suggests techniques for the comparison of benchmark descriptions, the synthesis tools used, as well as the synthesized designs finally generated. We propose a classification scheme for the assumptions made for the comparison of different synthesis tools, and present an Assumptions Chart that can be used to visualize different benchmarks, tools and synthesis results. We illustrate application of this Assumptions Chart using synthesis experiments that were conducted on some sample High-Level Synthesis Workshop bench-marks

Hierarchical gate-array routing on a hypercube multiprocessor

Gate-arrays are the most common design style for semicustom VLSI integrated circuits. An important part of the gate-array design process is the routing of wires between the logic elements, which is an extremely compute-intensive operation. This paper presents an algorithm for routing gate-arrays that uses a hypercube connected parallel processor to provide the necessary computation power. In order to make optimal use of the hypercube, the routing algorithm is organized so that interprocessor communication is kept to minimum. It occurs only during the global routing and crossing placement phases of the algorithm, which constitute less than 15% of the total running time of the algorithm. On the basis of the results of executing the algorithm on two gate-array benchmarks the case is made for using hypercube multiprocessors as accelerators for compute-intensive CAD operations.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28650/1/0000466.pd