Implementing image processing applications in embedded systems is a difficult challenge due to the drastic constraints in terms of cost, energy consumption and real time execution. Reconfigurable architectures are good candidates to take-up this challenge and especially when the architecture is able to support different word-lengths of pixel through Sub-Word Parallelism (SWP) capabilities. Exploiting the diversity of supported data-types requires automation tools able to optimize the data word-length under an accuracy constraint. In this paper, a new approach for word-length optimization in the case of SWP operations is proposed. Compared to existing approaches the optimization time is significantly reduced without sacrificing the quality of the optimized solution. The results show the ability of our approach to exploit the SWP capabilities associated with multimedia processors.

This paper presents a new unified design flow developed within the Perplexus project that aims to accelerate parallelizable data-intensive applications in the context of ubiquitous computing. This contribution relies on the JubiTool: a set of integrated tools (JubiSplitter, JubiCompiler, UbiAssembler), allowing respectively to extract, compile and assemble parallelizable parts of applications described in Jubi language. Jubi is a modified Java agent based language (JADE) dedicated to the Ubichip (the bio-inspired chip developed within the confines of the Perplexus project). By appending hardware directives to a software agent description, the inherent flexibility of software is combined with the runtime performance of a hardware execution. In the case of typical Perplexus applications such as the spiking neural network simulator, this contribution takes profit of the intrinsic property of the Ubichip in terms of parallelism resulting in an expected speedup of at least one order of magnitude. Finally, this hybrid (SW/HW) flow could be easily modified and adapted to support other kind of distributed platforms.

This paper describes an efficient graph-based method to optimize data-flow expressions for best hardware implementation. The method is based on factorization, common subexpression elimination (CSE) and decomposition of algebraic expressions performed on a canonical representation, Taylor Expansion Diagram. The method is generic, applicable to arbitrary algebraic expressions and does not require specific knowledge of the application domain. Experimental results show that the DFGs generated from such optimized expressions are better suited for high level synthesis, and the final, scheduled implementations are characterized, on average, by 15.5% lower latency and 7.6% better area than those obtained using traditional CSE and algebraic decomposition.

An efficient graph-based method to optimize polynomial expressions in data-flow computations is presented. The method is based on the factorization, common-subexpression elimination, and decomposition of algebraic expressions performed on a canonical Taylor expansion diagram representation. It targets the minimization of the latency and hardware cost of arithmetic operators in the scheduled implementation. The generated data-flow graphs are better suited for high-level synthesis than those extracted directly from the initial specification or obtained with traditional algebraic decomposition methods. Experimental results show that the resulting implementations are characterized by better performance and smaller datapath area than those obtained using traditional algebraic decomposition techniques. The described method is generic, applicable to arbitrary algebraic expressions, and does not require any knowledge of the application domain.

An original technique to transform functional representation of the design into a structural representation in form of a data flow graph (DFG) is described. A canonical, word-level data structure, Taylor expansion diagram (TED), is used as a vehicle to effect this transformation. The problem is formulated as that of applying a sequence of decomposition cuts to a TED that transforms it into a DFG optimized for a particular objective. A systematic approach to arrive at such a decomposition is described. Experimental results show that such constructed DFG provides a better starting point for architectural synthesis than those extracted directly from HDL specifications

This paper describes an efficient method to perform factorization of DSP transforms based on Taylor expansion diagram (TED). It is shown that TED can efficiently represent and manipulate mathematical expressions. We demonstrate that it enables efficient factorization of arithmetic expressions of DSP transforms, resulting in a simplification of the computation