Abstract data types and high-level synthesis

The use of abstract data types for high-level synthesis is addressed. It is demonstrated how data types can be used in the synthesis process to achieve reductions in area and delay of the logic level implementation. Four fundamental type constructs-structures, unions, vectors, and enumerations-are considered. Data types and functions on their values are extended to support don´t care information. Supporting abstract data types in behavioral representations is addressed for both an internal data-flow representation and the ELLA hardware description language. Finally, synthesis results for several design examples are presented. Smaller and faster implementations are obtained by supporting encoding and don´t care minimization in the high-level synthesis process