Synchronization detection for multi-process hierarchical synthesis

Complex system specifications are often hierarchically composed of several subsystems. Each subsystem contains one or more processes. In order to provide optimization across different levels of hierarchy, a synchronicity analysis of the concerned processes has to be performed during high-level synthesis. The first step is the generation of a condensed graph representation of the inter-process communication. This graph is then utilized to detect inter-process communication which can be used to represent synchronization points between two or more processes. A synchronization point represents the starting point of an interval in which the communicating processes run synchronously. This interval is limited by unbounded data-dependent loops, denoted as de-synchronization points. As a result, different processes can only share resources in such an interval.