Source-level debugging for FPGA high-level synthesis

Abstract

We describe a source-level debugging framework for FPGA high-level synthesis (HLS) that offers gdb-like step, break, and data inspection functionality for an HLS-generated hardware circuit. With the proposed framework, the user can inspect the values of logic signals in the hardware from the C source code perspective. The logic signal values come from one of two sources: 1) a logic simulation of the RTL, or 2) an actual execution of the hardware on an FPGA. In addition to the software-like ecosystem for FPGA HLS debugging, the framework provides the user with insight on the RTL produced by the HLS tool for each C statement, and permits concurrent hardware and software debugging to discover the first point at which any logic signal in the hardware mismatches with its corresponding variable in software.