A FIRRTL Backend for the Calyx High-Level Accelerator Compilation Infrastructure

Ayaka Yorihiro, Griffin Berlstein, Kevin Laeufer and Adrian Sampson

Abstract

We build a new translation from Calyx, an open-source intermediate language for compiling high-level programs into hardware accelerators, to FIRRTL, an intermediate representation used in the open-source Chisel and CIRCT projects. Calyx previously targeted Verilog as a de facto intermediate language for hardware description; our new backend avoids the complexity of targeting Verilog source code and requires important generalizations for the Calyx compiler. We demonstrate the technical challenges endemic to bridging high-level and low-level hardware compiler infrastructures.