Automata-based symbolic scheduling for looping DFGs

This paper presents an exact technique for scheduling looping data-flow graphs that implicitly supports functional pipelining and loop winding. Automata-based symbolic modeling provides efficient representation of ail causal executions of a given behavioral description subject to finite state bounds. Since a complete set of scheduling solutions is found, further incremental refinements, such as sequential interface protocol constraints, can be easily accommodated. Efficiency in the implementation is maintained by careful formulation of the automata and by judicious exploration techniques. Results are presented for traditionally referenced benchmarks, several large synthetic benchmarks, and a practical industrial example.