Webinar: High-Level Synthesis for Hardware/Software Architectural Exploration of an Inferencing Algorithm

Summary

Edge devices of all types are getting smarter, with the ability to listen to us, understand our gestures, and even recognize us. This intelligence comes from the inferencing capabilities of deep neural networks. Inferencing is compute intensive and can easily overwhelm embedded processors or the limited power budgets of some edge systems. One way to address this is to move the computationally complex parts of the inferencing algorithm into hardware, where it can be performed faster and more efficiently.

A practical way to approach this is to use a virtual platform which is a software representation of the hardware platform (System-On-Chip or board), modeled at a high enough level of abstraction where software execution may be simulated without the complexities of low-level hardware. The platform can execute the entire software stack, including the OS and the hypervisor, on an Instruction Set Simulation (ISS) model of the processor, which in turn is simulated on a host computer.

This seminar will present a design flow including HW/SW co-design and High-Level Synthesis (HLS) that allows developers to migrate compute intensive functions from software running on an embedded processor to a hardware based accelerator as a loosely coupled bus-based peripheral. Relocating a function from software to hardware improves performance and efficiency of the design.

The example design used in this seminar will implement a wake word algorithm. Wake word algorithms need to continuously monitor an audio input stream for one or more keywords, and wake the system if the word is found. It requires significant audio pre-processing, as well as an inference for a deep neural network. These calculations are performed multiple times per second. Migrating functions to hardware will dramatically improve battery life in this application.

You will see how SpaceStudio, from Space Codesign, covers the algorithm creation/capture phase and algorithm validation on a virtual platform. Architecture optimization such as exploration to partition the algorithm between multicore CPU and FPGA can be performed with full system compilation for execution on a physical board.

Speakers

Hubert Guérard
CEO & CTO
Space Codesign

Hubert Guérard is the CEO at Space Codesign Systems whose flagship product, SpaceStudio, eases the design flow of application into hardware centric implementation. He graduated from Polytechnique Montréal where the technology was born. Over the years, he held several positions from engineer to director of engineering. He currently oversees the development of SpaceStudio and is expanding the solution to new market.

Stuart Clubb
Technical Product Management Director
Siemens EDA

Stuart is responsible for Catapult HLS Synthesis and Verification Solutions since July 2017. Prior to this role, Stuart had been successfully managing the North American FAE team for Mentor/Siemens and Calypto Design Systems and was key to the growth achieved for the CSD products after the Calypto acquisition. Moving from the UK in 2001 to work at Mentor Graphics, Stuart held the position of Technical Marketing Engineer, initially on the Precision RTL synthesis product for 6 years and later on Catapult for 5 years. He has held various engineering and application engineering roles ASIC and FPGA RTL hardware design and verification. Stuart graduated from Brunel University, London, with a Bachelors of Science.

Sadhvi Praveen
HLS Technologist
Siemens EDA

Sadhvi Praveen is a Product Engineer in the Catapult team, focusing on High-Level Synthesis for FPGA/ASIC. She has been with Siemens EDA for over 4 years, holding a variety of roles in pre-sales and technical marketing teams. She holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology.

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