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3.4.5. Loop Fusion
Loop fusion is a compiler transformation in which two adjacent loops are merged into a single loop over the same index range. This transformation is typically applied to reduce loop overhead and improve run-time performance.
Unfused Loops | Fused Loops |
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Loop control structures represent a significant overhead. By fusing two loops, the number of control structures needed for the loops is reduced from two to one, reducing this overhead. The main goal of reducing the number of control structures is to save FPGA area for your design while still maintaining (ideally increasing) component throughput.
Fusing outer loops introduces concurrency where there was previously none. Combining bodies of two adjacent loops (Lj and Lk) forms a single loop (Lf) with a loop body that spans the bodies of Lj and Lk. This combined loop body creates an opportunity for operations that are serialized across a given iteration of Lj and Lk to execute concurrently. In effect, the two loops now execute as one, reducing latency.
If inner loops are fused, concurrency is already achieved by pipelined execution of the outer loop iteration. In these cases, the concurrency effect of loop fusion is diminished.
Fusion Criteria
- The loops must be adjacent.
That is, you cannot have a statement Si with side-effects such that Si executes after Lj and before Lk.
- Each loop must have a single-entry point and a single exit point. For example, loops that contain break statements are not considered for fusion.
- The loops must have no negative-distance dependencies.
That is, for loops Lj and Lk where Lj is defined before Lk, iteration m of loop Lk does not depend on values calculated in iteration m+n (where n>0) of loop Lj.
Automatic Loop Fusion
The Intel® FPGA SDK for OpenCL™ Offline Compiler fuses loops with the same trip counts automatically if the compiler analysis of your component determines that fusing the loops is profitable.
- One of the two loops, but not both, is annotated with the ivdep pragma.
- One of the two loops, but not both, contains stall-free logic.
The Loop Analysis Report in the High-Level Design Reports indicates when loops are fused.
- loop_fuse pragma
Override the compiler profitability analysis and fuse adjacent loops if it is safe.
- nofusion pragma
Annotate loops with this pragma to request that the compiler not fuse the annotated loop.