Optimization Techniques for Pipelined Scheduling

A new approach is formulated for the synthesis of optimized pipelined data paths. The pipelined data paths are generated by first using a greedy algorithm and then applying a series of moves on the greedy solution to obtain an improved pipelined solution in terms of the number of stages, the number of registers, and the latency time. A set of heuristics is used to reduce the size of the design space explored. Optimization techniques are applied to reduce the height of the datajbw graph. The reduced dataflow graphs are then used to obtain new pipelined solutions. When deciding which pipelined schedule should be generated, the trade-offs between the set of functional units selected and the optimizations that can be performed on the graph with the given functional unit set have to be taken into account. The algorithm has been used successfully in synthesizing pipelined data paths for problems encountered in the current literature. The algorithm has been implemented in C on a MIPS RC3240 RISComputer and hus a typical run time of a few s,econds.