Unified evaluation model for interconnection schemes used in behavioral synthesis

This paper introduces a new methodology to evaluate datapath interconnection schemes at the behavioral level. This evaluation model is validated by comparison with RTL synthesis evaluation results. It has been implemented and used for architecture exploration in order to select the best interconnection scheme to use. A generic datapath model capable of representing a variety of interconnection schemes is presented. The efficiency of each scheme depends on the application under synthesis. In general, mux-based interconnections are more efficient for resources with low sharing factors. Contrarily, designs that employs a large controller or a large instruction set to enable high resource sharing factors give better results with bus-based interconnections. Experiments have shown that comparison using a behavioral level evaluation model is enough for quality measurement and qualitative classification.