Aspect driven compilation for dataflow designs

This paper proposes a novel hardware compilation approach targeting dataflow designs. This approach is based on aspect-oriented programming to decouple design development from design optimisation, thus improving portability and developer productivity while enabling automated exploration of design trade-offs to enhance performance. We introduce FAST, a language for specifying dataflow designs that supports our approach. Optimisation strategies for the generated designs are specified in FAST, making use of facilities in the domain-specific aspect-oriented language, LARA. Our approach is demonstrated by implementing various seismic imaging designs for ReverseTime Migration (RTM), which have performance comparable to state-of-the-art FPGA implementations while being produced with improved developer productivity.