3.5.1.1.3 Thread-level Parallelism
(Ask a Question)Modern CPUs have multiple cores that can be used to concurrently execute multiple threads in software. Threads are widely used in C/C++, where, parallelism is realized at the granularity of entire C/C++ functions. Hence thread-level parallelism is referred to as coarse-grained parallelism since one or more functions execute in parallel. SmartHLS™ supports hardware synthesis of hls::threads, where concurrently executing threads in software are synthesized into concurrently executing hardware units (see 3.5.1.11 Multi-threading with SmartHLS Threads). This allows a software developer to take advantage of spatial parallelism in hardware using a familiar parallel programming paradigm in software. Moreover, the parallel execution behaviour of threads can be debugged in software, it is considerably easier than debugging in hardware.
In a multi-threaded software program, synchronization between the threads can be important, with the most commonly used synchronization constructs being mutexes and barriers. SmartHLS supports the synthesis of mutexes and barriers into hardware.