Due to the increasing complexity of digital circuits, the tendency towards easier design is increasing. Over the years, RTL-modeling using hardware description languages has become the most established method for designing digital circuits. With the aim of achieving faster development and verification, high-level synthesis has been developed, allowing designers to describe digital circuits using programming languages.
Throughout the thesis, the operation of a high-level compiler is presented and the process of designing a digital circuit using high-level synthesis is shown through implementation of multiple algorithms. The description of the implementation of the first algorithm (Sobel filter) demonstrates an effective way of high-level description for video processing algorithms. It describes image processing using line buffers and window buffers. In the second part, the implementation of graphical interface for an oscilloscope on programmable logic is presented. Thesis describes the procedures for scaling, triggering, reading channels and displaying acquired data.
During the design process, it quickly became apparent that prior knowledge of digital circuits and hardware description languages is important, even though the algorithm itself is described using a programming language. The usefulness of high-level synthesis was noticeable in the rapid development and quick verification of circuit's performance;however, while predicting the occupancy of the programmable circuit, the tool proved to be unreliable.
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