The target audience of L2 API are users who have a certain understanding of HLS and programming on FPGAs and want to make modifications on kernels, including:
- Operator combinations in kernel, like number of operators or operator pipeline. Most L1 APIs and glue logics inside L2 kernels are connect with streams. Users could add more operators into kernels to increase its performance as long as it is not bounded by other factors like logic resource and memory bandwidth.
- Add more pre-processing and post-processing to kernel, like compression/decompression. Certain files might store its data in a compressed format to save the memory space and bandwidth to transfer. Adding a decompression module to build a longer processing pipeline will save the time to decompress the data and increase system performance.
- Test correctness in sw-emu, hw-emu, and on-board.
- Get accurate kernel resources and clock.
- Analyze kernel’s timing performance and throughput.