Function-Level Module Sharing in High-Level Synthesis

High-Level Synthesis (HLS) which automatically synthesizes an RTL circuit from a behavioral description written in a high-level programming language such as C has now become popular in order to improve the design productivity. However, the area of HLS-generated circuits is often larger than that of human-designed ones. One of the reasons is that HLS tools often generate multiple instances of the same module from a C function. In this work, we propose a function-level module sharing technique in HLS.