Synthesis of multimode digital signal processing systems

In this paper, we propose a design methodology for implementing a multimode (or multi-configuration) and multi-throughput system into a single hardware architecture. The inputs of the design flow are the data flow graphs (DFGs), representing the different modes (i.e. the different applications to be implemented), with their respective throughput constraints. While traditional approaches merge DFGs together before the synthesis process, we propose to use ad-hoc scheduling and binding steps during the synthesis of each DFG. The scheduling, which assigns operations to specific time steps, maximizes the similarity between the control steps and thus decreases the controller complexity. The binding process, which assigns operations to specific functional units and data to specific storage elements, maximizes the similarity between datapaths and thus minimizes steering logic and register overhead. First results show the interest of the proposed synthesis flow.