Towards a VHDL-based synthesis of a wavelet transform processor

In this paper, we analyze the implementation of Mallat’s “pyramid” algorithm for the 1-D wavelet transform through a commercial synthesis tool (SynopsysTM Behavioral Compiler). A high level, procedural description of the transform is coded in VHDL and a few architectures are obtained, with no reference to known structural solutions (systolic arrays, and the like). The first purpose of this work is to evaluate the scheduling produced by a general purpose synthesis tool against well studied architectural solutions. We show that coding style does influence the performance of the tool; yet, the synthesized architectures compare well to those obtained starting from structurally specified solutions, under realistic VLSI assumptions