Placement-and-routing-based register allocation for coarse-grained reconfigurable arrays

Abstract

DSP architectures often feature multiple register files with sparse connections to a large set of ALUs. For such DSPs, traditional register allocation algorithms suffer from a lot of problems, including a lack of retargetability and phase-ordering problems. This paper studies alternative register allocation techniques based on placement and routing. Different register file models are studied and evaluated on a state-of-the art coarse-grained reconfigurable array DSP, together with a new post-pass register allocator for rotating register files.