Source level optimisation of VHDL for behavioural synthesis
T.P.K. Nijhar, Andrew D. Brown · IEE Proceedings - Computers and Digital Techniques · 1997
Optimisation in high level behavioural synthesis is usually performed by applying transforms to the datapath and control graphs. An alternative approach, however, is to apply transforms at a higher level in the process, specifically directly to the behavioural source description. This technique is analogous to the way in which the source code of a conventional sequential programming language may be processed by an optimising compiler. The application of this kind of preprocessing to a number of example behavioural VHDL source descriptions (which are then fed into a ‘conventional’ synthesis system) produces structural descriptions which are up to 32% smaller and 52% faster.