Digital Filter Design Tools Eric Hill Lixin Su ECE 734
Outline Motivation Accomplishments Conclusion
Motivation Large design space Many different design goals Many transformations available to optimize filter design Many different design goals Clock period, hardware cost, power consumption All interdependent, tradeoffs required Designers need automatic design tools
Project Goals Create an automatic design tool Rapidly explore design space Lower total design overhead Open-ended High level input format Graphical representation
Current Status Features Implemented Graphical Representation Retiming (clock and register minimization) Folding (limited functionality) Unfolding Iteration bound, critical path calculation Support for high level input format
Visualization Used Graphviz graph drawing software Developed by AT&T Research Lab Our design tool generates output files which are readable by Graphviz x + D 2D
Retiming Clock Period Minimization (Sec 4.4.2) Create the Constraint graph for the original DFG Apply Floyd-Warshall algorithm to derive all-pairs shortest path Apply all possible clock periods to find the smallest possible clock period
Retiming Register Minimization (Sec 4.4.3) Derive feasibility constraints from the original DFG Create a new DFG by inserting dummy nodes Create the constraint graph for the new DFG Apply Floyd-Warshall algorithm to derive clock period constraints Derive the cost function from the new DFG Use Matlab (linprog) or GAMS to solve the linear programming problem (defined by the cost function, feasibility constraints and clock period constraints)
Clock Minimization Clock = 3 Clock= 2 Regs = 4 Regs = 5 New DFG Original DFG
Clock & register minimization Regs = 4 Clock = 2 Regs = 4 Original DFG New DFG
Folding It supports limited functionalities. Check if a folding scheme is possible Minimize the clock period under one folding scheme
Conclusion Experiences from design Input format is important to the success of a tool Algorithm implementations are the most time-consuming part GUI is important
Questions I have no professional training. I already gave my best. I have no regrets at all. -- William Hung on American Idol