Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Pro Edition: Reference Manual

ID 683349
Date 10/04/2021
Public

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10.2. Internal Streams

You can use the HLS ihc::stream object as a FIFO in a single task or component.

For an example of using the HLS tasks ihc::stream object as a FIFO, review the tutorial in <quartus_installdir>/hls/examples/tutorials/system_of_tasks/internal_stream.

To help you understand the tutorial better, review the following diagram showing a store-load dependency:

This diagram is simplified from the tutorial. It shows 10 iterations, while the tutorial goes through 32 iterations.

In the diagram, i is the index of the outer loop and j is the index of the inner loop.



Each iteration of the outer loop reads all the values written by the previous loop iteration and writes one less value to the buffer. The internal stream outperforms the array in this design because array must allocate enough space to store written values before the values are read, but an internal stream does not need to allocate this space.

In addition, the trip count of the inner loop decreases by one in each outer loop, so the space claimed by array is never filled after the first iteration, which wastes area.