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

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ID 683259
Date 12/18/2019
Public
Document Table of Contents
Document Table of Contents x
1. Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide 2. Best Practices for Coding and Compiling Your Component 3. Interface Best Practices 4. Loop Best Practices 5. Memory Architecture Best Practices 6. Datatype Best Practices 7. Advanced Troubleshooting A. Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide Archives B. Document Revision History for Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide
3. Interface Best Practices x
3.1. Choose the Right Interface for Your Component 3.2. Avoid Pointer Aliasing
3.1. Choose the Right Interface for Your Component x
3.1.1. Pointer Interfaces 3.1.2. Avalon® Memory Mapped Master Interfaces 3.1.3. Avalon® Memory Mapped Slave Interfaces 3.1.4. Avalon® Streaming Interfaces 3.1.5. Pass-by-Value Interface
4. Loop Best Practices x
4.1. Reuse Hardware By Calling It In a Loop 4.2. Parallelize Loops 4.3. Construct Well-Formed Loops 4.4. Minimize Loop-Carried Dependencies 4.5. Avoid Complex Loop-Exit Conditions 4.6. Convert Nested Loops into a Single Loop 4.7. Declare Variables in the Deepest Scope Possible
4.2. Parallelize Loops x
4.2.1. Pipeline Loops 4.2.2. Unroll Loops 4.2.3. Example: Loop Pipelining and Unrolling
5. Memory Architecture Best Practices x
5.1. Example: Overriding a Coalesced Memory Architecture 5.2. Example: Overriding a Banked Memory Architecture 5.3. Merge Memories to Reduce Area 5.4. Example: Specifying Bank-Selection Bits for Local Memory Addresses
5.3. Merge Memories to Reduce Area x
5.3.1. Example: Merging Memories Depth-Wise 5.3.2. Example: Merging Memories Width-Wise
6. Datatype Best Practices x
6.1. Avoid Implicit Data Type Conversions 6.2. Avoid Negative Bit Shifts When Using the ac_int Datatype
7. Advanced Troubleshooting x
7.1. Component Fails Only In Cosimulation 7.2. Component Gets Bad Quality of Results
1. Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide
2. Best Practices for Coding and Compiling Your Component
3. Interface Best Practices
4. Loop Best Practices
5. Memory Architecture Best Practices
6. Datatype Best Practices
7. Advanced Troubleshooting
A. Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide Archives
B. Document Revision History for Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide

1. Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide

Updated for:
Intel® Quartus® Prime Design Suite 19.1
The Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Best Practices Guide provides techniques and practices that you can apply to improve the FPGA area utilization and performance of your HLS component. Typically, you apply these best practices after you verify the functional correctness of your component.

In this publication, <quartus_installdir> refers to the location where you installed Intel® Quartus® Prime Design Suite.

The default Intel® Quartus® Prime Design Suite installation location depends on your operating system:
Windows
C:\intelFPGA_standard\22.1
Linux
/home/<username>/intelFPGA_standard/22.1

About the Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition Documentation Library

Documentation for the Intel® HLS Compiler Standard Edition is split across a few publications. Use the following table to find the publication that contains the Intel® HLS Compiler information that you are looking for:
Table 1.   Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Standard Edition Documentation Library
Title and Description
Release Notes

Provides late-breaking information about the Intel® HLS Compiler.

Link
Getting Started Guide

Get up and running with the Intel® HLS Compiler by learning how to initialize your compiler environment and reviewing the various design examples and tutorials provided with the Intel® HLS Compiler.

Link
User Guide

Provides instructions on synthesizing, verifying, and simulating intellectual property (IP) that you design for Intel FPGA products. Go through the entire development flow of your component from defining your component and testbench up to integrating your component IP into a larger system with the Intel Quartus Prime software.

Link
Reference Manual

Provides reference information about the features supported by the Intel HLS Compiler. Find details on Intel® HLS Compiler command options, header files, pragmas, attributes, macros, declarations, arguments, and template libraries.

Link
Best Practices Guide

Provides techniques and practices that you can apply to improve the FPGA area utilization and performance of your HLS component. Typically, you apply these best practices after you verify the functional correctness of your component.

Link
Quick Reference

Provides a brief summary of Intel HLS Compiler declarations and attributes on a single two-sided page.

Link
Level Two Title