Automatic Generation of ApplicationSpecific FPGA Overlays with RapidWright In this paper, we introduce ApplicationSpecific FPGA Overlays (ASOverlays), a new approach to automatically generate overlays from highlevel description language applications that can achieve baremetal performances. Our approach is based on the automatic extraction of hardware kernels from data flow applications. Extracted kernels are then leveraged for applicationspecific generation of hardware accelerators. The reconfiguration of the overlay is done with RapidWright which allows to bypass the HDL design flow. Through prototyping, we demonstrated the viability and relevance of our approach. Experiments show a productivity improvement up to 20xc3x97 compared to the state of the art FPGA overlays, while achieving over 1.33xc3x97 higher Fmax than direct FPGA implementation and the possibility of lower resource and power consumption compared to bare metal.

Automatic Generation of ApplicationSpecific FPGA Overlays with RapidWright Overlay architectures implemented on FPGA devices have been proposed as a means to increase FPGA adoption in generalpurpose computing. They provide the benefits of software such as flexibility and programmability, thus making it easier to build dedicated compilers. However, existing overlays are generic, resource and power hungry with performance usually an order of magnitude lower than bare metal implementations. As a result, FPGA overlays have been confined to research and some niche applications. In this paper, we introduce ApplicationSpecific FPGA Overlays (ASOverlays), which can provide baremetal performance to FPGA overlays, thus opening doors for broader adoption. Our approach is based on the automatic extraction of hardware kernels from data flow applications. Extracted kernels are then leveraged for applicationspecific generation of hardware accelerators. Reconfiguration of the overlay is done with RapidWright which allows to bypass the HDL design flow. Through prototyping, we demonstrated the viability and relevance of our approach. Experiments show a productivity improvement up to 20x compared to the state of the art FPGA overlays, while achieving over 1.33x higher Fmax than direct FPGA implementation and the possibility of lower resource and power consumption compared to bare metal.