HECTOR
Ruifan Xu, Youwei Xiao, Jin Luo, Yun Liang
Abstract
Hardware synthesis requires a complicated process to generate synthesizable register transfer level (RTL) code. High-level synthesis tools can automatically transform a high-level description into hardware design, while hardware generators adopt domain specific languages and synthesis flows for specific applications. The implementation of these tools generally requires substantial engineering efforts due to RTL's weak expressivity and low level of abstraction. Furthermore, different synthesis tools adopt different levels of intermediate representations (IR) and transformations. A unified IR obviously is a good way to lower the engineering cost and get competitive hardware design rapidly by exploring different synthesis methodologies.