Intel® Hyperflex™ Architecture High-Performance Design Handbook

ID 683353
Date 10/04/2021
Public

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2.2.7.2. Initial Conditions and Retiming

The initial power-up conditions can limit the Compiler's ability to perform logic optimization during synthesis, and to move registers into Hyper-Registers during retiming.

The following examples show how setting initial conditions to a known state ensures that circuits are functionality equivalent after retiming.

Figure 17. Circuit Before RetimingThis sample circuit shows register F1 at power-up can have either state ‘0’ or state ‘1’. Assuming the clouds of logic are purely combinational, there are two possible states in the circuit C1 (F1=‘0’ or F1=‘1’).
Figure 18. Circuit After Retiming ForwardIf the Retimer pushes register F1 forward, the Retimer must duplicate the register in each of the branches that F1 drives.

After retiming and register duplication, the circuit now has four possible states at power-up. The addition of two potential states in the circuit after retiming potentially changes the design functionality.

Table 6.  Possible Power-Up States After Retiming

F11 States

F12 States

0 0
0 1
1 0
1 1

C-Cycle Equivalence

The c-cycle refers to the number of clock cycles a design requires after power-up to ensure functional equivalence. The c-cycle value is an important consideration in structuring your design's reset sequence. To ensure the design's functional equivalence after retiming, apply an extra clock cycle after power-up. This extra clock cycle ensures that the states of F11 and F12 are always identical. This technique results in only two possible states for the registers, 0/0 or 1/1, assuming the combinational logic is non-inverting on both paths.

Retiming Backward

Retiming registers backward is always a safe operation with a c-cycle value of 0. In this scenario, the Compiler merges F11 and F12 together. If you do not specify initial conditions for F11 and F12, the Compiler always permits merging. If you specify initial conditions, the Compiler accounts for the initial state of F11 and F12. In this case, the retiming transformation only occurs if the transformation preserves the initial states.

If the Compiler transformation cannot preserve the initial states of F11 and F12, the Compiler does not allow the retiming operation. To avoid changing circuit functionality during retiming, apply an extra clock cycle after power-up to ensure the content of F11 and F12 are always identical.