Abstract-High level synthesis (HLS) tools are increasingly adopted for hardware design as the quality of tools consistently improves. Concerted development effort on HLS tools represents significant software development effort, and debugging and validation represents a significant portion of that effort. However, HLS tools are different from typical large-scale software systems; HLS tool output must be subsequently verified through functional verification of the generated RTL implementation. Debugging machine-generated functionally incorrect RTL is time-consuming and cumbersome requiring back-tracing through hundreds of signals and simulation cycles to determine the underlying error. This challenging process requires support framework in the HLS flow to enable fast and efficient pinpointing of the incorrectness in the tool. In this paper, we present a debug framework that uses just-in-time (JIT) traces and automated insertion of verification code into the generated RTL to assist in debugging an HLS tool. This framework aids the user by quickly pinpointing the earliest instance of execution mismatch, paired with detailed information on the faulty signal, and the corresponding instruction from the application source. Using CHStone benchmarks, we demonstrate that this technique can significantly reduce bug detection latency: often with zero cycle detection.

We address the problem of two-dimensional heat conduction in a solid slab whose upper and lower surfaces are subjected to uniform convection. In the midsection of the slab there is a periodic array of isothermal pipes of general cross section. The main objective of this work is to find the optimum shapes of the pipes that maximize the Shape Factor (heat transport rate). The Shape Factor is obtained by transforming the periodic array of pipes into a periodic array of strips, using the generalized SchwarzChristoffel transformation, and applying the collocation boundary element method on the transformed domain. Subsequently we pose the inverse problem, i.e. finding the shape that maximizes the Shape factor given the perimeter of the pipes. For large Biot number the optimum shapes are in agreement with the isothermal case, i.e. circular for sufficiently small perimeters/heat transfer, and elongated towards the surfaces of the slab for larger perimeters/heat transfer. Furthermore, for the isothermal case, we were able to discover a new family of optimum shapes for large thickness of the slab and large * E-mail: t.leontiou@frederick.ac.cy † E-mail: magzhan.ikram@nu.edu.kz ‡ E-mail: kenes.beketayev@nu.edu.kz § Corresponding Author, e-mail: m.fyrillas@gmail.com 1 perimeters, which do not have their maximum width on the horizontal axis of symmetry.For small Biot number the optimum pipes are flatter than the isothermal ones for a given perimeter. The flatness becomes more apparent for larger perimeters. Most important, for large perimeters there exists a critical thickness which is characterized by maximum heat transfer rate. This is further investigated using the finite element method to obtain the critical thickness of a slab and the critical depth of the periodic array of circular pipes. KeywordsSolid slab with periodic array of pipes; Convective heat transfer; Laplace equation, generalized Schwarz-Christoffel transformation; Shape Optimization, Optimum shapes of pipes;Critical Thickness of slab, Critical depth of the pipes.