A Dataflow IR for Memory Efficient RIPL Compilation to FPGAs

Abstract

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are fundamentally different to fixed processors architectures because their memory hierarchies can be tailored to the needs of an algorithm. FPGA compilers for high level languages are not hindered by fixed memory hierarchies. The constraint when compiling to FPGAs is the availability of resources. In this paper we describe how the dataflow intermediary of our declarative FPGA image processing DSL called RIPL (Rathlin Image Processing Language) enables us to constrain memory. We use five benchmarks to demonstrate that memory use with RIPL is comparable to the Vivado HLS OpenCV library without the need for language pragmas to guide hardware synthesis. The benchmarks also show that RIPL is more expressive than the Darkroom FPGA image processing language.