LP-HLS: Automatic power-intent generation for high-level synthesis based hardware implementation flow

Abstract The abstraction level for digital designs is rising from Register Transfer Level (RTL) to algorithmic untimed or transaction-based, followed by an automated high-level synthesis (HLS) flow. However, it is still a significant challenge for chip architects and designers to describe low-power design decisions at the system-level. Nowadays, low power design techniques for digital blocks are applied at RTL and there exists no commercial tool or methodology that can automatically derive the power intent from the system-level description. The process requires considerable amount of human intervention and various low-level details that are needed to implement low power schemes at RTL. This research aims to integrate low power techniques, specifically Power Shut-Off (PSO), within a model-based hardware flow and to derive an automated Low Power-High Level Synthesis (LP-HLS) methodology. The methodology aims at minimizing the design effort for low power design by deriving low-level power intent automatically for model-based designs, while using high-level synthesis to achieve a broad set of target system implementations. LP-HLS uses set of pragmas and a directive file to derive power intent information. To illustrate the methodology, three model designs, ranging from simple designs to medium complexity hardware accelerators, are considered. Finally, the power saving results for the design scenarios validate the effectiveness of our LP-HLS methodology.

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