Minimizing Buffer Requirements under Rate-Optimal Schedule in Regular Dataflow Networks

Large-grain synchronous dataflow graphs or multi-rate graphs have the distinct feature that the nodes of the dataflow graph fire at different rates. Such multi-rate large-grain dataflow graphs have been widely regarded as a powerful programming model for DSP applications. In this paper we propose a method to minimize buffer storage requirement in constructing rate-optimal compile-time (MBRO) schedules for multi-rate dataflow graphs. We demonstrate that the constraints to minimize buffer storage while executing at the optimal computation rate (i.e. the maximum possible computation rate without storage constraints) can be formulated as a unified linear programming problem in our framework. A novel feature of our method is that in constructing the rate-optimal schedule, it directly minimizes the memory requirement by choosing the schedule time of nodes appropriately. Lastly, a new circular-arc interval graph coloring algorithm has been proposed to further reduce the memory requirement by ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: VLSISP
• Authors: Ramaswamy Govindarajan, Guang R. Gao, Palash Desai
• Keywords: Buffer Storage, Dataflow Graphs, Multi-rate Dataflow Graph, VLSISP 2002