Conditional statements are fundamental techniques in describing a decision-making process used in simple 1
designs and sophisticated algorithms. 2
This section explains the conditional statements in HLS and the relation between the corresponding 3
software and hardware components. 4
Selection among several options is one of the fundamental concepts in combinational logic. 5
Multiplexers are the main hardware components used to implement decision-making processes described 6
in HLS by if-then-else and switch-case statements. 7
In this section, I am going to focus on synthesising conditional statements into combinational circuits. 8
This section consists of nine lectures. The current lecture introduces the section. The next lecture 9
will explain how to describe conditional statements in software and hardware. 10
I will show that if-statements in software and switches in hardware can implement simple decision-making 11
processes in a code. 12
Lecture 3 will introduce the multiplexer hardware module, implemented by basic logic gates including 13
AND, OR, and NOT, to implement a conditional statement in digital design. The general form of the multiplexer 14
to implement sophisticated conditional statements is explained in the fourth lecture. 15
The fifth lecture will describe three different coding techniques in HLS to represent a multiplexer. 16
Lecture 6 will explain Encoder and Decoder design modules which are used in hardware to transform 17
data forms. The lecture will also explain how to describe these hardware modules in HLS using 18
conditional statements. Putting together all the concepts of this section, lecture seven will implement 19
an instructive example called Leading One. Lecture 8 will implement 20
the leading one example in Vivado-HLS toolset. 21
Finally, the last lecture will give a couple of design exercises to master all the concepts you 22
have been learning throughout this section.