6. Loops in Components

Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Pro Edition: Reference Manual

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Date 4/01/2024

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6. Loops in Components

The Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition attempts to pipeline loops to maximize throughput of the various components that you define.

Loop Pipelining

Pipelining loops enables the Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition to execute subsequent iterations of a loop in a pipeline-parallel fashion. Pipeline-parallel execution means that multiple iterations of the loop, at different points in their executions, are executing at the same time. Because all stages of the loop are always active, pipelining loops helps maximize usage of the generated hardware. This loop pipelining is similar to the hardware pipelining described in Intel HLS Compiler Hardware Model.

Figure 11. Pipelined loop with three stages and four iterationsIn this figure, one stage is the logic that runs during one clock cycle.

There are some cases where pipelining is not possible at all. In other cases, a new iteration of the loop cannot start until N cycles after the previous iteration.

The number of cycles for which a loop iteration must wait before it can start is called the initiation interval (II) of the loop. This loop pipelining status is captured in the high level design report (report.html). In general, an II of 1 is desirable.

A common case where II > 1 is when a part of the loop depends in some way on the results of the previous iteration of the same loop. The circuit must wait for these loop-carried dependencies to be resolved before starting a new iteration of the loop. These loop-carried dependencies are indicated in the optimization report.

In the case of nested loops, II > 1 for an outer loop is not considered a significant performance limiter if a critical inner loop carries out the majority of the work. One common performance limiter is if the HLS compiler cannot statically compute the trip count of an inner loop (for example, a variable inner loop trip count). Without a known trip count, the compiler cannot pipeline the outer loop.

For more information about loop pipelining, see Pipeline Loops in Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Best Practices Guide.

Compiler Pragmas Controlling Loop Pipelining

The Intel® HLS Compiler has several pragmas that you can specify in your code to control how the compiler pipelines your loops.

Most loop pragmas must immediately precede the loop that the pragma applies to. You cannot have a loop pragma before elements such as labels on loops. The following table shows examples of how to apply loop pragmas correctly.

Incorrect (produces a compile-time error)	Correct
#pragma ivdep TEST_LOOP: for(int idx = 0; idx < counter; idx++) {...}	TEST_LOOP: #pragma ivdep for(int idx = 0; idx < counter; idx++) {...}

Table 17. Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition Loop Pragmas Summary
Pragma	Description
`disable_loop_pipelining`	Prevents compiler from pipelining a loop,
`ii`	Forces a loop to have a loop initiation interval (II) of a specified value.
`ivdep`	Ignores memory dependencies between iterations of this loop.
`loop_coalesce`	Tries to fuse all loops nested within this loop into a single loop.
`loop_fuse`	Directs the compiler to try and fuse pairs of adjacent loops.
`max_concurrency`	Limits the number of iterations of a loop that can simultaneously execute at any time.
`max_interleaving`	Controls whether iterations of a pipelined inner loop in a loop nest from one invocation of the inner loop can be interleaved in the component data pipeline with iterations from other invocations of the inner loop.
`nofusion`	Prevents the annotated loop from being fused with adjacent loops.
`speculated_iterations`	Specifies the number of clock cycles that a loop exit condition can take to compute.
`unroll`	Unrolls the loop completely or by a number of times.

For a list of tutorials that demonstrate best practices to follow when implementing loops and using the loop pragmas in your component, see Loop Best Practices in Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Best Practices Guide.

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Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Pro Edition: Reference Manual

6. Loops in Components

Loop Pipelining

Compiler Pragmas Controlling Loop Pipelining