We're considering the approach on a new project. Our target is developing image processing algorithms and implement them on FPGAs.
Matlab HDL Coder converts matlab code to HDL code, and Xilinx Vitis HLS synthesizes C/C++/SystemC to HDL code.
We can make a quick judgment that algorithm development using Matlab is much less painful than lower level programming languages such as C/C++/SystemC.
Is there any things else about these tools which we should know?
Thank you in advance.
Vitis HLS can provide:
So if you are targeting Xilinx devices I would suggest C++ HLS with Vitis.
Be aware that HLS is quite difficult to master, and that's because the procedural nature of C++ is fundamentally different from HDLs. This makes generation of conditional branches not clear. Be wary of using too many branches in your code.
Try to keep a "dataflow" style in mind, where data is streamed in and an output is produced in a clear, pipelined, streamed fashion.
Be wary also of memory accesses and latency throughout your system, sometimes the bottlenecks aren't where you think they are.
Lastly, a suggestion about using HLS at all. There are many libraries in FPGA already done (for instance here) that use native FPGA HDL but provide you accelerators for the basic blocks of computer vision to use within your software. You might just want to use them without need to reinvent the wheel.
I hope it helps!
