Intel® High Level Synthesis Compiler Pro Edition: User Guide

ID 683456
Date 10/04/2021
Public

A newer version of this document is available. Customers should click here to go to the newest version.

Document Table of Contents

5.1. The High-Level Design Reports

The High-Level Design Reports are a group of reports and viewers that you can use to help optimize your design by reviewing the statistics and visualizations that the reports provide.

Access the High-Level Design Reports by using a web browser to open the report.html file found in the <result>.prj/reports folder created when you compile your component to RTL.

Use the tutorials provided with the Intel® HLS Compiler to view examples of the reports and learn how to use the reports and viewers to help optimize and refine your component design.

For details about using the reports to help optimize your design, review Reviewing the High-Level Design Reports (report.html).

In some cases, information in the reports and viewers are estimates and might not match the results from compiling your design with Intel® Quartus® Prime software. However, Compiling your component using the Intel® Quartus® Prime software might take several hours. In contrast, the Intel® HLS Compiler can generate the High Level Design Report in minutes for most designs.

Tip: Compiling your component using the Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software might take several hours. In contrast, the Intel® HLS Compiler Pro Edition can generate the High Level Design Reports in minutes for most designs.
The reports are divided into the following categories:
  • The report under Summary gives you a quick overview of the results of compiling your design including a summary of each component in your design and a summary of the estimated resources that each component in your design uses.
  • The viewers under Views provide different views into the structure, interfaces, datapaths, and computation flows in your component. These views can help identify bottlenecks in your design.
  • The reports under Throughput Analysis help you optimize your design based on results of analyzing loops and providing key performance metrics on component blocks.
  • The reports under Area Analysis help you locate area usage inefficiency. The reports provide a detailed breakdown of the estimated FPGA area usage. It also provides feedback on key hardware features such as private memory configuration.

    Do not use the estimated area usage for final resource utilization planning. For a more accurate estimate of area usages, synthesize your component with Intel® Quartus® Prime.

Table 5.  High-Level Design Reports
Category Report or Viewer Name Description
Summary Summary The Summary Report gives you a quick overview of the results of compiling your design including a summary of each component in your design and a summary of the estimated resources that each component in your design uses.

The Functions section shows you the short names generated for overloaded and templated functions in your hardware design by the Intel® HLS Compiler to prevent name collisions.

These short names are used in other parts of the High Level Design Report.

Other sections of the summary contain information only after you compile your design with Intel® Quartus® Prime software.

Views System Viewer The System Viewer is an interactive view of your system that allows you to review information such as the sizes and types of loads and stores, stalls, and latencies.

Clicking on different entries in the hierarchical graph list displays different views of your design.



  • System View

    The System View of the System Viewer provides a high-level view of components and tasks in your system.

  • Function View

    The Function views of the System Viewer show the blocks inside your component and any tasks. A function appears in this view if it is declared as component or launched as a task function. Other called functions are automatically inlined.

  • Block View

    The Block views of the System Viewer show stallable operations in your component and task functions, and the clusters and their connections.

  • Cluster View

    The Cluster views of the System Viewer shows the contents of clusters in your components.

Function Memory Viewer The Function Memory Viewer shows you the memory system that the Intel® HLS Compiler generated for your component. Use the Function Memory Viewer to help you identify data movement bottlenecks in your component design.
Schedule Viewer The Schedule Viewer shows the estimated start and ending clock cycle for functions, blocks, clusters, and individual instructions in your design.
Throughput Analysis Loop Analysis The Loop Analysis Report shows the loop optimization strategies either applied by the compiler or through the various loop pragmas available.

The report also provides key performance metrics on all blocks including any target II, scheduled fMAX, block II, and maximum interleaving iterations.

You can use this report to help you with the following tasks:

  • Identify fMAX bottleneck in your design
  • Set proper fMAX target for your design
  • Estimate the execution latency
  • Determine where to use loop pragmas
Important: The scheduled fMAX that this report displays is not an accurate estimate of the fMAX that your design can achieve. Synthesize your component with Intel® Quartus® Prime to ensure that your design meets your performance requirements. You might also find that you can lower your scheduled fMAX target to save FPGA area utilization.
Loop Viewer (alpha) The Loop Viewer shows you the behavior of loops in your component and task functions as a color-coded bar graph.
Verification Statistics For each component that the testbench calls, the verification statistics report provides information such as the number and type of invocations, latency, initiation interval, and throughput.

This report is available only after you simulate your component.

Area Analysis Area Analysis of System This report provides a detailed breakdown of the estimated FPGA area usage of your design. It also provides information about key hardware features such as private memory configuration.

The Quartus Fit... sections are empty or hidden until you compile your design with Intel® Quartus® Prime software.

The estimated area usage information correlates with, but does not necessarily match, the resource usage results from the Intel® Quartus® Prime software. Use the estimated area usage to identify parts of the design with large area overhead. You can also use the estimates to compare area usage between different designs.

Do not use the estimated area usage information for final resource utilization planning. Synthesize your component with Intel® Quartus® Prime to determine accurate area usage information for final resource utilization planning.

Area Analysis of Source This report is deprecated and might be removed in a future release. Use the Area Analysis of System report instead.