A framework for specifying and designing pipelines

We present a framework for designing control circuitry for pipelined circuits. Our framework supports any mixture of data-dependent, data-stationary and time-stationary control for pipelines with out-of-order execution. There are four parameters to the framework: (1) Protocol schemes describe how transactions are transferred between stages in the pipeline. (2) Arbitration schemes specify how to prevent and/or handle structural hazards in the pipeline. (3) Control schemes determine how transactions are routed through the pipeline and how stages know what operation to perform. (4) Ordering schemes describe a method for matching up transactions as they leave the pipeline with transactions that entered the pipeline. Based on our framework we have developed an algorithm for compiling the control circuitry for a wide class of pipelines from a high-level description of the schedule for the pipeline.<
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