Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Pro Edition: Best Practices Guide

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ID 683152
Date 3/28/2022
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Document Table of Contents
Document Table of Contents x
1. Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition Best Practices Guide 2. Best Practices for Coding and Compiling Your Component 3. FPGA Concepts 4. Interface Best Practices 5. Loop Best Practices 6. fMAX Bottleneck Best Practices 7. Memory Architecture Best Practices 8. System of Tasks Best Practices 9. Datatype Best Practices 10. Advanced Troubleshooting A. Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition Best Practices Guide Archives B. Document Revision History for Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition Best Practices Guide
3. FPGA Concepts x
3.1. FPGA Architecture Overview 3.2. Concepts of FPGA Hardware Design 3.3. Methods of Hardware Design
3.1. FPGA Architecture Overview x
3.1.1. Adaptive Logic Module (ALM) 3.1.2. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Block 3.1.3. Random-Access Memory (RAM) Blocks
3.1.1. Adaptive Logic Module (ALM) x
3.1.1.1. Lookup Table (LUT) 3.1.1.2. Register
3.2. Concepts of FPGA Hardware Design x
3.2.1. Maximum Frequency (fMAX) 3.2.2. Latency 3.2.3. Pipelining 3.2.4. Throughput 3.2.5. Datapath 3.2.6. Control Path 3.2.7. Occupancy
3.3. Methods of Hardware Design x
3.3.1. How Source Code Becomes a Custom Hardware Datapath 3.3.2. Scheduling 3.3.3. Mapping Parallelism Models to FPGA Hardware 3.3.4. Memory Types
3.3.1. How Source Code Becomes a Custom Hardware Datapath x
3.3.1.1. Mapping Source Code Instructions to Hardware 3.3.1.2. Mapping Arrays and Their Accesses to Hardware
3.3.2. Scheduling x
3.3.2.1. Dynamic Scheduling 3.3.2.2. Clustering the Datapath 3.3.2.3. Handshaking Between Clusters
3.3.3. Mapping Parallelism Models to FPGA Hardware x
3.3.3.1. Data Parallelism 3.3.3.2. Task Parallelism
3.3.3.1. Data Parallelism x
3.3.3.1.1. Executing Independent Operations Simultaneously 3.3.3.1.2. Pipelining
3.3.3.1.2. Pipelining x
3.3.3.1.2.1. Pipelining Loops Within A Component 3.3.3.1.2.2. Pipelining Across Component Invocations
3.3.4. Memory Types x
3.3.4.1. Component Memory 3.3.4.2. External Memory
4. Interface Best Practices x
4.1. Choose the Right Interface for Your Component 4.2. Control LSUs For Your Variable-Latency MM Host Interfaces 4.3. Avoid Pointer Aliasing
4.1. Choose the Right Interface for Your Component x
4.1.1. Pointer Interfaces 4.1.2. Avalon® Memory Mapped Host Interfaces 4.1.3. Avalon® Memory Mapped Agent Memories 4.1.4. Avalon® Memory Mapped Agent Registers 4.1.5. Avalon® Streaming Interfaces 4.1.6. Pass-by-Value Interface
5. Loop Best Practices x
5.1. Reuse Hardware By Calling It In a Loop 5.2. Parallelize Loops 5.3. Construct Well-Formed Loops 5.4. Minimize Loop-Carried Dependencies 5.5. Avoid Complex Loop-Exit Conditions 5.6. Convert Nested Loops into a Single Loop 5.7. Place if-Statements in the Lowest Possible Scope in a Loop Nest 5.8. Declare Variables in the Deepest Scope Possible 5.9. Raise Loop II to Increase fMAX 5.10. Control Loop Interleaving
5.2. Parallelize Loops x
5.2.1. Pipeline Loops 5.2.2. Unroll Loops 5.2.3. Example: Loop Pipelining and Unrolling
6. fMAX Bottleneck Best Practices x
6.1. Balancing Target fMAX and Target II
7. Memory Architecture Best Practices x
7.1. Example: Overriding a Coalesced Memory Architecture 7.2. Example: Overriding a Banked Memory Architecture 7.3. Merge Memories to Reduce Area 7.4. Example: Specifying Bank-Selection Bits for Local Memory Addresses
7.3. Merge Memories to Reduce Area x
7.3.1. Example: Merging Memories Depth-Wise 7.3.2. Example: Merging Memories Width-Wise
8. System of Tasks Best Practices x
8.1. Executing Multiple Loops in Parallel 8.2. Sharing an Expensive Compute Block 8.3. Implementing a Hierarchical Design 8.4. Balancing Capacity in a System of Tasks
8.4. Balancing Capacity in a System of Tasks x
8.4.1. Enable the Intel® HLS Compiler to Infer Data Path Buffer Capacity Requirements 8.4.2. Explicitly Add Buffer Capacity to Your Design When Needed
9. Datatype Best Practices x
9.1. Avoid Implicit Data Type Conversions 9.2. Avoid Negative Bit Shifts When Using the ac_int Datatype
10. Advanced Troubleshooting x
10.1. Component Fails Only In Simulation 10.2. Component Gets Poor Quality of Results
1. Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition Best Practices Guide
2. Best Practices for Coding and Compiling Your Component
3. FPGA Concepts
4. Interface Best Practices
5. Loop Best Practices
6. fMAX Bottleneck Best Practices
7. Memory Architecture Best Practices
8. System of Tasks Best Practices
9. Datatype Best Practices
10. Advanced Troubleshooting
A. Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition Best Practices Guide Archives
B. Document Revision History for Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition Best Practices Guide

When the critical path that affects II is the computation of the exit condition and not a loop-carried dependency, the Intel® HLS Compiler can attempt to relax this scheduling constraint by speculatively continuing to execute iterations of the loop while the exit condition is being computed.

If it is determined that the exit condition is satisfied, the effects of these extra iterations are suppressed.

Typically, the exit condition for a loop iteration must be evaluated before the program determines whether to start the next loop iteration or continue into the rest of the function. This requirement means that the loop initiation interval (II) cannot be lower than the number of cycles required to compute the exit condition. Speculated iterations can help lower the loop II because operations within the loop can occur in the function pipeline at the same time as the exit condition is evaluated.

This speculative execution can achieve lower II and higher throughput, but it can incur additional overhead between loop invocations (equivalent to the number of speculated iterations). A larger loop trip count helps to minimize this overhead.

For any speculated iteration, instructions with side effects outside of the loop (like writing to memory or a stream) are not completed until the loop exit condition for the iteration has been evaluated. For loop iterations that are in flight but incomplete when the loop exit condition is met, side effect data is discarded.

While speculated iterations can improve loop II, they occupy the pipeline until they are completed. A new loop invocation cannot start until all of the speculated iterations have completed. For example, the next iteration of an outer loop cannot start until all the speculated iterations of an inner loop have completed.

Terminology Reminder
A loop invocation is what starts a series of loop iterations. One loop iteration is one execution of the body of a loop.
Figure 19. Loop Orchestration Without Speculative Execution


Figure 20. Loop Orchestration With Speculative Execution


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