Data Path Parallelization to Improve Performance of High-level Synthesized Sprite Drawing Hardware

A mobile terminal architecture which can dynamically reconfigure the optimal hardware for each application can achieve higher performance and lower power consumption compared with a conventional one. We are developing a software game library so that the high-level synthesis, HLS, can automatically generate an efficient hardware module in such mobile terminals. The HLS library must be built with deep consideration of hardware organization. Otherwise, the HLS converts software into a large and slow hardware module. This paper focuses on the drawing of 2D sprite characters. Character movement is achieved by repeatedly compositing the background image and sprite image during drawing. The data paths are parallelized on the sprite drawing process so that the HLS can produce better hardware. The experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method on the actual machine and simulation.