A compiler for multiprocessor DSP implementation

Abstract

McDAS, a software environment designed to support the real-time implementation of digital signal processing (DSP) applications onto multiple processors, is described. Users program their algorithms as they would on a single processor, and McDAS automatically schedules and compiles the program onto the target multiprocessor. The scheduler maximizes the computational throughput by simultaneously considering pipelining, retiming, and parallelism while accounting for processor and memory constraints, as well as interprocessor communication delays. If the architecture is scalable or configurable, the scheduler can be invoked with different numbers of processors and multiprocessor topologies to explore various implementations. The code generator is similarly retargetable to different memory architectures and core processors. Data buffers and synchronizations are automatically inserted to ensure correct execution. The code generated can also execute the algorithms with either quasi-infinite precision or bit-true precision, allowing the algorithm designer to assess the effects of quantization and truncation. The results on a set of benchmarks are presented.<>