High-level Synthesis (HLS) has been widely adopted as it significantly improves the hardware design productivity and enables efficient design space exploration (DSE). HLS tools can be used to deliver solutions for many different kinds of design problems, which are often better solved with different levels of abstraction. While existing HLS tools are built using compiler infrastructures largely based on a single-level abstraction (e.g., LLVM), we propose ScaleHLS, a next-generation HLS compilation flow, on top of a multi-level compiler infrastructure called MLIR, for the first time. By using an intermediate representation (IR) that can be better tuned to particular algorithms at different representation levels, we are able to build this new HLS tool that is more scalable and customizable towards various applications coming with intrinsic structural or functional hierarchies. ScaleHLS is able to represent and optimize HLS designs at multiple levels of abstraction and provides an HLS-dedicated transform and analysis library to solve the optimization problems at the suitable representation levels. On top of the library, we also build an automated DSE engine to explore the multi-dimensional design space efficiently. In addition, we develop an HLS C front-end and a C/C++ emission back-end to translate HLS designs into/from MLIR for enabling the end-to-end ScaleHLS flow. Experimental results show that, comparing to the baseline designs only optimized by Xilinx Vivado HLS, ScaleHLS improves the performances with amazing quality-of-results -- up to 768.1x better on computation kernel level programs and up to 3825.0x better on neural network models.
翻译:高层次合成(HLS)已被广泛采用,因为它大大提高了硬件设计生产率,并使得高效的设计空间探索(DSE)得以实现。 HLS工具可用于为许多不同类型的设计问题提供解决方案,这些问题往往通过不同程度的抽象解决而得到更好的解决。虽然现有的HLS工具是使用主要基于单一层次抽象的编译基础设施(例如LLVMM)建立的,但我们提议在名为VLIR(VLIR)的多层次编译器基础设施之外,再建立一个规模化的HLS汇编流程,即下一代的HLS汇编流程。除了使用一个称为VLSIR(IR)的多层次编译器外,我们还可以使用能够更好地适应不同层次的某种特定算法(IR)的算法,从而在不同层次上更好地调整了特定的 HLSS(IS) 模型,从而将多层次的 C-LSLS 升级到 SLS(M-LA) 的升级升级到高层次的 C-LSLS(M-LLL) 的升级的模型,在适当的方向上,我们还在图书馆上建立一个自动的DSES-LS-LS-LS-LS-LS-LS-LS-LS-LS-S-S-LS-LS-LS-S-S-S-S-S-LVLV-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-LV-S-S-S-S-LV-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-LVLV-S-S-S-S-LVL-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-LV-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-SLV-SLVDLVLVDR-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-