Procedure exlining: a transformation for improved system and behavioral synthesis

We present techniques for solving the inverse problem of procedure inlining, namely the problem of replacing sequences of statements with procedure calls. Two techniques are provided, one for finding redundant sequences of statements that can be replaced by calls to one procedure, and another for dividing a large set of statements into several procedures, where each procedure performs a distinct computation. Such procedure exlining can transform a behavioral specification, originally written for readability, into a specification that can be implemented efficiently, because procedures can greatly improve the results of synthesis tools. We demonstrate the usefulness of the techniques on several examples. We have implemented the procedure exlining technique as part of a VHDL transformation tool.