Hercules implementation

A hardware description language called HardwareC was devel( )ed to capture the three requirements listed above. HardwareC is the input language to the Hercules and Hebe high-level synthesis system that is the system implementation of algorithms developed in this research ... 

Finally, the system implementation of Hercules and Hebe is described in Chapter 10. Chapter 11 describes several design scenarios and presents the experimental results of applying the synthesis system to the design of benchmark circuits and chip designs. Chapter 12 concludes this research and proposes avenues of further research. 

Synthesis can be fully automated to transform an input HardwareC description directly to a logic-level implementation. Hercules and Hebe also support user-driven synthesis, where a designer can intervene and drive high-level decisions based on an evaluation of the possible design tradeoffs. 

Hercules and Hebe have been applied to the design examples in the benchmark suite proposed by the High-level Synthesis Workshop [Wor89]. Most of these benchmark examples have been rewritten in HardwareC and synthesized to logic-level implementations. 

System Implementation. An aim of this research project was to complement the theoretical development by constmcting a practical synthesis tool which embodies the theory and that can be applied to complex ASIC designs. Towards this objective, we have developed a hardware description language called Hard-wareC and a high-level synthesis system called Hercules and Hebe that are targeted towards synchronous ASIC designs. 

In addition, we developed a hardware description language called Hard-wareC with particular attention to ASIC design specification issues. The system implementation of the algtaithms is provided by programs Hercules and Hebe, which serve as the front-end to Stanford s Olympus Synthesis system. They have been applied to the synthesis of benchmaric examples and to some chip designs at Stanford University. 

---