Platform-Aware RTL Generation: Bridging the Gap between Design and Implementation

Inhalt:
The gap between design and implementation has long been a bottleneck in hardware development, with Register-Transfer Level (RTL) generation often neglecting the physical implementation constraints that can make or break a design. This paper presents a novel approach to Platform-Aware RTL Generation, bridging the gap between design and implementation by incorporating platform-aware considerations into the RTL generation stage. Our approach enables the creation of implementation-aware RTL code that takes into account the physical constraints of the target platform, such as timing, power, and area. By doing so, we reduce the number of design iterations and improve the overall efficiency of the hardware development process. The key to our approach is a flexible engine that interprets platform models and modifies design models through a set of fundamental editing operations, resulting in RTL code that is tailored for the target platform. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach through qualitative analysis and quantitative results, showing a significant 73% reduction in code generation effort for industrial-grade designs. By bridging the gap between design and implementation, our Platform-Aware RTL Generation flow has the potential to revolutionize the hardware development process, enabling faster time-to-market, improved design quality, and reduced development costs. Index terms—Model Driven Architecture, RTL generation, Platform-Aware RTL Design, Deployment Platform Constraints, Technology-Specific Optimization, Design for Test, Safety.