Symbolic algebra and timing driven data-flow synthesis

Abstract

The growing market of multi-media applications has required the development of complex ASICs with significant data-path portions. Unfortunately, most high-level synthesis tools and methods cannot automatically synthesize data paths such that complex arithmetic library blocks are intelligently used. Symbolic computer algebra has been previously used to automate mapping data flow into a minimal set of complex arithmetic components. In this paper, we present extensions to the previous methods in order to find the minimal critical path delay (CPD) mapping. A new algorithm is proposed that incorporates symbolic manipulations such as tree-height-reduction, factorization, expansion, and Horner transformation. Such manipulations are used as guidelines in initial library element selection. Furthermore, we demonstrate how substitution can be used for multi-expression component sharing and critical path delay optimization.