Publication

Chext: A Domain-specific Language for Safe and Agile Elastic Dataflow Accelerators

Paolo Ienne
2026

Abstract

Creating dataflow circuits with HLS tools to exploit memory- or task-level parallelism is challenging. These tools can generate functional designs easily, but optimizing them for performance often requires extensive code restructuring, pragma tuning, and even RTL integration. Writing low-level RTL, however, is rarely productive. We propose Chext, a domain-specific language that provides a thin abstraction layer over RTL for building complex dataflow circuits with elastic interfaces. Chext enables a safe and agile development flow with its novel approach and offers a rich component library to accelerate design, making such circuits more accessible on FPGAs. In this paper, we introduce Chext, outline its design principles, and present two case studies comparing it with Vitis HLS.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/a014196d-babc-45e0-a175-f4a028a2ad46

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Paolo Ienne
2026

Abstract

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/entities/publication/a014196d-babc-45e0-a175-f4a028a2ad46

About this result

Related concepts (32)

High-level synthesis

High-level synthesis (HLS), sometimes referred to as C synthesis, electronic system-level (ESL) synthesis, algorithmic synthesis, or behavioral synthesis, is an automated design process that takes an abstract behavioral specification of a digital system and finds a register-transfer level structure that realizes the given behavior. Synthesis begins with a high-level specification of the problem, where behavior is generally decoupled from low-level circuit mechanics such as clock-level timing.

Integrated circuit design

Integrated circuit design, or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits, or ICs. ICs consist of miniaturized electronic components built into an electrical network on a monolithic semiconductor substrate by photolithography. IC design can be divided into the broad categories of digital and analog IC design. Digital IC design is to produce components such as microprocessors, FPGAs, memories (RAM, ROM, and flash) and digital ASICs.

Hardware description language

In computer engineering, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure and behavior of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits. A hardware description language enables a precise, formal description of an electronic circuit that allows for the automated analysis and simulation of an electronic circuit.

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