FLASH: Fast, ParalleL, and Accurate Simulator for HLS

Abstract

A large semantic gap between a high-level synthesis (HLS) design and a low-level RTL simulation environment often creates a barrier for those who are not FPGA experts. Moreover, such a low-level simulation takes a long time to complete. Software HLS simulators can help bridge this gap and accelerate the simulation process; but their shortcoming is that they do not provide performance estimation. To make matters worse, we found that the current FPGA HLS commercial software simulators sometimes produce incorrect results. In order to solve these performance estimation and correctness problems while maintaining the high speed of software simulators, this paper proposes a new HLS simulation flow named FLASH. The main idea behind the proposed flow is to extract scheduling information from the HLS tool and automatically construct an equivalent cycle-accurate simulation model while preserving C semantics. Experimental results show that FLASH runs three orders of magnitude faster than the RTL simulation.

Publication
In Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), IEEE.