DEFACTO: A Design Environment for Adaptive Computing Technology

. The lack of high-level design tools hampers the widespread adoption of adaptive computing systems. Application developers have to master a wide range of functions, from the high-level architecture design, to the timing of actual control and data signals. In this paper we describe DEFACTO, an end-to-end design environment aimed at bridging the gap in tools for adaptive computing by bringing together parallelizing compiler technology and synthesis techniques. 1 Introduction Adaptive computing systems incorporating configurable computing units (CCUs) (e.g., FPGAS) can offer significant performance advantages over conventional processors as they can be tailored to the particular computational needs of a given application (e.g., template-based matching, Monte Carlo simulation, and string matching algorithms). Unfortunately, mapping programs to adaptive computing systems is extremely cumbersome, demanding that software developers also assume the role of hardware designers. At present, de..