Hardware Synthesis in ForSyDe

Abstract: There have been numerous e orts in the development of functional hardware description languages over the past years. In this thesis project the design space for embedded domain specic languages for hardware synthesis in Haskell is explored by comparing the approaches of two di erent language implementations. This report contains an introduction to the fundamental concepts for modeling hardware in a functional style and the core concepts of implementing deep embedded languages. Based on this, the architectures of ForSyDe.Deep and Cash are examined in order to nd their strengths and weaknesses. The results are applied to the implementation of translation of data-parallel higher order functions in ForSyDe.Deep. The implementation of higher order functions has shown that the lack of type information available for the translation of process functions in the current implementation of ForSyDe.Deep is the limiting factor for achieving a higher level of abstraction within process functions through polymorphism or higher order functions. This does not diminish the approach of ForSyDe though as the real power lies in the abstraction provided by the process network.