PandA 0.9.2 released

PandA 0.9.2 new features introduced:
– added an initial support to GCC 4.9.0,
– stable support to GCC versions: v4.5, v4.6, v4.7 (default) and v4.8,
– added an experimental support to Verilator simulator,
– new dataflow dependency analysis for LOADs and STOREs; we now use GCC alias analysis to see if a LOAD and STORE pair or a STORE and STORE pair may conflict,
– added a frontend step that optimizes PHI nodes,
– added a frontend step that performs conditionally if conversions,
– added a frontend step that performs simple code motions,
– added a frontend step that converts if chains in a single multi-if control construct,
– added a frontend step that simplifies short circuits based control constructs,
– added a proxy-based approach to the LOADs/STOREs of statically resolved pointers,
– improved EBR inference for Lattice based devices,
– now, memory models are different for Lattice, Altera, Virtex5 and Virtex6-7 based devices,
– updated FloPoCo to a more recent version,
– now, register allocation maps storage values on registers without write enable when possible,
– added support to CentOS/Scientific Linux distributions,
– added support to ArchLinux distribution,
– added support to Ubuntu 13.10 distribution,
– now, testbenches accept a user defined error for float based computations; the error is specified in ULPs units; a Unit in the Last Place is the spacing between floating-point numbers,
– improved architectural timing model,
– added a very simple symbolic estimator of number of cycles taken by a function, it mainly covers function without loops and without unbounded operations,
– general refactoring of automatic HLS testbench generation,
– added support to libm function lceil and lceilf,
– added skip-pipe-parameter option to bambu; it is is used to select a faster pipelined unit (xilinx devices have the default equal to 1 while lattice and altera devices have the default equal to 0),
– improved memory allocation when byte-enabled write memories are not needed,
– added support to variable lenght arrays,
– added support to memalign builtin,
– added EXT_PIPELINED_BRAM memory allocation policy, bambu with this option assumes that a block ram memory is allocated outside the core (LOAD with II=1 and latency=2 and STORE with latency=1),
– added 2D matrix multiplication examples for integers and single precision floating point numbers,
– added some synthesis scripts checking bambu quality of results w.r.t. 72 single precision libm functions (e.g., sqrtf, sinf, expf, tanhf, etc.),
– added spider tool to automatically generate latex tables from bambu synthesis results,
– moved all the dot generated files into directory HLS_output/dot/. Such files (scheduling, FSM, CFG, DFG, etc) are now generated when –print-dot option is passed,
– VIVADO is now the default backend flow for Zynq based devices.

Problems fixed:
– fixed all the Bison related compilation problems,
– fixed some problems with testbench generation of 2D arrays,
– fixed configuration scripts for manually installed Boost libraries; now, we need at least Boost 1.48.0,
– fixed some problems with C pretty-printing of the internal IR,
– fixed some ISE/Vivado synthesis problems when System Verilog based model are used,
– fixed some problems with –soft-float based synthesis,
– fixed RTL-backend configuration scripts looking for tools (e.g., ISE, Vivado, Quartus and Diamond) already installed,
– fixed some problems with real-to-int and int-to-real conversions, added some explicit tests to the panda regressions.

For any information or bug report, please write to panda-info@elet.polimi.it