Publikation
Performance Aspects of Correctness-oriented Synthesis Flows
Fritjof Bornebusch; Christoph Lüth; Robert Wille; Rolf Drechsler
In: 9th International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development (MODELSWARD). International Conference on Model-Driven Engineering and Software Development (MODELSWARD-2021), 9th, February 8-10, Online-Conference, 2021.
Zusammenfassung
When designing electronic circuits, available synthesis
flows either focus on accelerating the synthesized circuit or
correctness. In the quest for ever-faster hardware
designs, the correctness of these designs is often neglected.
Thus, designers need to trade-off between correctness and
performance. The question is how large the trade-off is? This work
presents a systematic comparison of two representative synthesis
flows, the LegUp HLS framework as a representative for flows
focusing on hardware acceleration, and a flow based on the proof
assistant Coq focusing on correctness. For evaluation purposes, a
32-bit MIPS processor synthesized using the two flows, and the final
HDL implementations are compared regarding their performance. Our
evaluation allows a quantitative analysis of the trade-off, showing
that correctness-oriented synthesis flows are competitive concerning
performance.