Exploiting Task Level Parallelism: Dataflow Optimization - 2021.2 English

Vitis High-Level Synthesis User Guide (UG1399)

Document ID
UG1399
Release Date
2021-12-15
Version
2021.2 English

The dataflow optimization is useful on a set of sequential tasks (for example, functions and/or loops), as shown in the following figure.

Figure 1. Sequential Functional Description

The above figure shows a specific case of a chain of three tasks, but the communication structure can be more complex than shown.

Using this series of sequential tasks, dataflow optimization creates an architecture of concurrent processes, as shown below. Dataflow optimization is a powerful method for improving design throughput and latency.

Figure 2. Parallel Process Architecture

The following figure shows how dataflow optimization allows the execution of tasks to overlap, increasing the overall throughput of the design and reducing latency.

In the following figure and example, (A) represents the case without the dataflow optimization. The implementation requires 8 cycles before a new input can be processed by func_A and 8 cycles before an output is written by func_C.

For the same example, (B) represents the case when the dataflow optimization is applied. func_A can begin processing a new input every 3 clock cycles (lower initiation interval) and it now only requires 5 clocks to output a final value (shorter latency).

Figure 3. Dataflow Optimization

This type of parallelism cannot be achieved without incurring some overhead in hardware. When a particular region, such as a function body or a loop body, is identified as a region to apply the dataflow optimization,Vitis HLS analyzes the function or loop body and creates individual channels that model the dataflow to store the results of each task in the dataflow region. These channels can be simple FIFOs for scalar variables, or ping-pong (PIPO) buffers for non-scalar variables like arrays. Each of these channels also contain signals to indicate when the FIFO or the ping-pong buffer is full or empty. These signals represent a handshaking interface that is completely data driven. By having individual FIFOs and/or ping-pong buffers, Vitis HLS frees each task to execute at its own pace and the throughput is only limited by availability of the input and output buffers. This allows for better interleaving of task execution than a normal pipelined implementation but does so at the cost of additional FIFO or block RAM registers for the ping-pong buffer, as shown in the following figure.

Figure 4. Structure Created During Dataflow Optimization

Dataflow optimization potentially improves performance over a statically pipelined solution. It replaces the strict, centrally-controlled pipeline stall philosophy with more flexible and distributed handshaking architecture using FIFOs and/or ping-pong buffers (PIPOs). The replacement of the centralized control structure with a distributed one also benefits the fanout of control signals, for example register enables, which is distributed among the control structures of individual processes. Refer to Vitis-HLS-Introductory-Examples/Dataflow on Github for examples of these concepts.

Dataflow optimization is not limited to a chain of processes, but can be used on any directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure. It can produce two different forms of overlapping: within an iteration if processes are connected with FIFOs, and across different iterations through PIPOs and FIFOs.