TY  - JOUR
A1  - Corre, Youenn
A1  - Diguet, Jean-Philippe
A1  - Heller, Dominique
A1  - Blouin, Dominique
A1  - Lagadec, Loic
T1  - TBES: Template-Based Exploration and Synthesis of Heterogeneous Multiprocessor Architectures on FPGA
JF  - ACM transactions on embedded computing systems : TECS
N2  - This article describes TBES, a software end-to-end environment for synthesizing multitask applications on FPGAs. The implementation follows a template-based approach for creating heterogeneous multiprocessor architectures. Heterogeneity stems from the use of general-purpose processors along with custom accelerators. Experimental results demonstrate substantial speedup for several classes of applications. In addition to the use of architecture templates for the overall system, a second contribution lies in using high-level synthesis for promoting exploration of hardware IPs. The domain expert, who best knows which tasks are good candidates for hardware implementation, selects parts of the initial application to be potentially synthesized as dedicated accelerators. As a consequence, the HLS general problem turns into a constrained and more tractable issue, and automation capabilities eliminate the need for tedious and error-prone manual processes during domain space exploration. The automation only takes place once the application has been broken down into concurrent tasks by the designer, who can then drive the synthesis process with a set of parameters provided by TBES to balance tradeoffs between optimization efforts and quality of results. The approach is demonstrated step by step up to FPGA implementations and executions with an MJPEG benchmark and a complex Viola-Jones face detection application. We show that TBES allows one to achieve results with up to 10 times speedup to reduce development times and to widen design space exploration.
KW  - Algorithms
KW  - Design
KW  - Electronic system level
KW  - high-level synthesis
KW  - multiprocessor
KW  - system-on-chip
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1145/2816817
SN  - 1539-9087
SN  - 1558-3465
VL  - 15
SP  - 113
EP  - 122
PB  - Association for Computing Machinery
CY  - New York
ER  -