A new generation of C-base synthesis tool and domain-specific computing

The first part of the tutorial presents a platform-based compilation and synthesis system, named xPilot, developed at UCLA. The xPilot provides advanced behavioral synthesis capability for compiling C, C++, or SystemC applications to high quality RTL code optimized for a given FPGA or ASIC platforms for logic, interconnects, and memory optimization with flexible performance and area trade-off. It includes a number of algorithmic innovations, such as scheduling based on the system of difference constraints, resource binding for distributed memory architectures, simultaneous register and functional unit binding, etc. The xPilot system has been licensed by AutoESL Design Technologies, Inc. for commercialization. The AutoPilot tool from AutoESL, derived from xPilot, has been successfully used for a number of FPGA designs. One application of using such C-to-FGPA compilation systems as xPilot or AutoPilot is to enable domain-specific computing using FPGAs as customized computing engines for accelerating a wide range of applications. The recent developments by AMD to open up its HyperTransport bus and Intel to open up its Front-side Bus lead to new high-performance computing platforms with high-bandwidth communication between CPUs and FPGAs, which make it possible to develop high-performance, power-efficient domain-specific computing platforms.