From Algorithm Graph Specification to Automatic Synthesis of FPGA Circuit: a Seamless Flow of Graphs Transformations

The control, signal and image processing applications are complex in terms of algorithms, hardware architectures and real-time/embedded constraints. System level CAD softwares are then useful to help the designer for prototyping and optimizing such applications. These tools are oftently based on design flow methodologies. This paper presents a seamless design flow which transforms a data dependence graph specifying the application into an implementation graph containing both data and control paths. The proposed approach follows a set of rules based on the RTL model and on mechanisms of synchronized data transfers in order to transform automatically the initial algorithmic graph into the implementation graph. This transformation flow is part of the extension of our AAA (Algorithm-Architecture Adequation) rapid prototyping methodology to support the optimized implementation of real-time applications on reconfigurable circuits. It has been implemented in SynDEx, a system level CAD software tool that supports AAA.