High-Level Synthesis versus Hardware Construction

Application-specific systems with FPGA accelerators are often designed using high-level synthesis or hardware construction tools. Nowadays, there are many frameworks available, both open-source and commercial. In this work, we aim at a fair comparison of several languages (and tools), including Verilog (our baseline), Chisel, Bluespec System Verilog (Bluespec Compiler), DSLX (XLS), MaxJ (MaxCompiler), and C (Bambu and Vivado HLS). Our analysis has been carried out using a representative example of 8×8 inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT), a widely used algorithm engaged in JPEG and MPEG decoders. The metrics under consideration include: (a) the degree of automation (how much less code is required compared to Verilog), (b) the controllability (possibility to achieve given design characteristics, namely a given ratio of the performance and area), and (c) the flexibility (ease of design modifications to achieve certain characteristics). Rather than focusing on computational kernels only, we use AXI-Stream wrappers for the synthesized implementations, which allows adequately evaluating characteristics of the designs when they are used as parts of real systems. Our study shows clear examples of what impact specific optimizations (tool settings and source code modifications) have on the overall system performance and area. It emphasizes how important is to be able to control the balance between the communication interface utilization and the computational kernel performance and delivers clear guidelines for the next generation tools for designing FPGA-accelerator-based systems.