Loops provide a very intuitive and concise way of capturing the behavior of an algorithm and are used often in C/C++ code. Loops are very well supported by synthesis: loops can be pipelined, unrolled, partially unrolled, merged, and flattened.
The optimizations that unroll, partially unroll, flatten, and merge effectively make changes to the loop structure, as if the code was changed. These optimizations ensure limited coding changes are required when optimizing loops. Some optimizations can be applied only in certain conditions. Some coding changes might be required.
Recommended: Avoid use of global
variables for loop index variables, as this can inhibit some optimizations.