Section: Software

Syntol

Participants : Paul Feautrier, Hadda Cherroun [ Former PhD student in Compsys ] .

Syntol is a modular process network scheduler. The source language is C augmented with specific constructs for representing communicating regular process (CRP) systems. The present version features a syntax analyzer, a semantic analyzer to identify DO loops in C code, a dependence computer, a modular scheduler, and interfaces for CLooG (loop generator developed by C. Bastoul) and Cl@k (see Sections  5.4 and  5.5 ). The dependence computer now handles casts, records (structures ), and the modulo operator in subscripts and conditional expressions. The latest developments are, firstly, a new code generator, and secondly, several experimental tools for the construction of bounded parallelism programs.

• The new code generator, based on the ideas of Boulet and Feautrier  [14] , generates a counter automaton that can be presented as a C program, as a rudimentary VHDL program at the RTL level, as an automaton in the Aspic input format, or as a drawing specification for the DOT tool.

• Hardware synthesis can only be applied to bounded parallelism programs. Our present aim is to construct threads with the objective of minimizing communications and simplifying synchronization. The distribution of operations among threads is specified using a placement function, which is found using techniques of linear algebra and combinatorial optimization.