Efficient Code Generation from the High-level Domain-specific Language Feldspar for DSPs

Paper in proceeding, 2010

Software for digital signal processors (DSPs) is traditionally highly hardware-dependent and hence porting it to new processors usually requires significant design effort. In this paper we present Feldspar (Functional Embedded Language for DSP and Parallelism), an embedded, high-level, domain-specific language for DSP algorithm design and the compilation techniques we developed for generating C code from specifications written in Feldspar. While Feldspar allows description of algorithms on specification level, we show that with the right set of abstractions and transformations this high level, functional specification can be transformed into C code that is comparable or better than reference, hand-crafted C language implementations. The Feldspar compiler is highly modular and plugin-based, hence future hardware-specific plugins will enable automatic generation of efficient, hardware-specific code. This approach enables the encapsulation of knowledge of hardware completely in the compiler and thus allows description of algorithms in completely hardware-independent, portable manner.