High-level Synthesis

TL;DR

High-level synthesis (HLS) automates hardware design from behavioral descriptions, enabling faster development and broader application across industries by translating high-level code into hardware structures.

Contribution

This paper provides an overview of HLS, its processes, and its expanding role in simplifying complex hardware design for various advanced applications.

Findings

HLS automates hardware design from high-level specifications.

HLS accelerates development in automotive, aerospace, and signal processing.

HLS facilitates integration of hardware and software design processes.

Abstract

Hardware synthesis is a general term used to refer to the processes involved in automatically generating a hardware design from its specification. High-level synthesis (HLS) could be defined as the translation from a behavioral description of the intended hardware circuit into a structural description similar to the compilation of programming languages (such as C and Pascal into assembly language. The chained synthesis tasks at each level of the design process include system synthesis, register-transfer synthesis, logic synthesis, and circuit synthesis. The development of hardware solutions for complex applications is no more a complicated task with the emergence of various HLS tools. Many areas of application have benefited from the modern advances in hardware design, such as automotive and aerospace industries, computer graphics, signal and image processing, security, complex simulations like molecular modeling, and DND matching. The field of HLS is continuing its rapid growth to facilitate the creation of hardware and to blur more and more the border separating the processes of designing hardware and software.