High Level Synthesis of Open Source Connect-6 Players

Connect-6 is a newly invented game [1], which is also a part of the computer olympiad. In this article we present our initial design of the Connect-6 player on FPGA. We used High Level Synthesis tools to convert existing open source C code to hardware. The preliminary unconstrained synthesis with SynphonyCC(SCC) generates hardware which occupies 70% of the Cyclone II FPGA, runs at a clock frequency of 37.68 MHz, and takes 52346 cycles to make two moves. In simulation it beats the software opponent consistently with an average winning length of 66 moves.