High-Level Synthesis: On the path to ESL design

In the SoCs context, the traditional IC design methodology relying on EDA tools used in a two stages design flow (a VHDL/Verilog RTL specification, followed by logical and physical synthesis) is no more suitable. Designing MPSoC requires new design approaches raising the specification abstraction up to Electronic System Level (ESL). Hence, virtual prototyping, design space exploration and high-level/system synthesis with the goal of optimised and functionally correct product implementation are needed. In this paper, we present the High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tool named GAUT. From a bit-accurate C/C++ specification and a set of design constraints, GAUT automatically generates a potentially pipelined RTL architecture described in both VHDL and SystemC respectively used for synthesis and virtual prototyping. Results demonstrate the interest of the tool on a MJPEG application and its capability in exploring various SoC design tradeoffs including several hardware accelerators HW-ACCs.