Branch optimisation techniques for hardware compilation.pdfVIP

Branch Optimisation Techniques for Hardware Compilation Henry Styles and Wayne Luk Department of Computing, Imperial College, 180 Queen’s Gate, London, England Abstract. This paper explores using information about program branch proba- bilities to optimise reconfigurable designs. The basic premise is to promote uti- lization by dedicating more resources to branches which execute more frequently. A hardware compilation system has been developed for producing designs which are optimised for different branch probabilities. We propose an analytical queue- ing network performance model to determine the best design from observed branch probability information. The branch optimisation space is characterized in an experimental study for Xilinx Virtex FPGAs of two complex applications: video feature extraction and progressive refinement radiosity. For designs of equal performance, branch-optimised designs require 24% and 27.5% less area. For de- signs of equal area, branch optimised designs run upto 3 times faster. Our analyti- cal performance model is shown to be highly accurate with relative error between 0.12 and 
  . 1 Introduction For most computer programs, the execution frequency of each basic block is controlled by the runtime behavior of conditional branches. Optimal resource allocation between basic blocks requires that execution frequencies be known. Software profilers collect execution frequencies for a representative dataset to support static resource allocation. Microprocessors demonstrate that branch probability information can be used at run- time to aid dynamic resource allocation. In this paper we explore the analogous use of branch probability information to optimize resource allocation in hardware compilation. In particular, the novel aspects of our work include: – a compiler that maps programs written in a subset of C to a set of hardware designs that are optimised for different branching probabilities; – analytical methods, including a queu