Specification of software pipelining using petri nets

This paper presents a flexible model for software pipelining using the petri nets. Our technique, called the Petri Net Pacemaker (PNP), can create near optimal pipelines with less algorithmic effort than other techniques. The pacemaker is a novel idea which exploits the cyclic behavior of petri nets to model the problem of scheduling operations of a loop body for software pipelining. A way of improving the performance of loops containing predicates is given. The PNP technique also shows how nested loops can be pipelined. A comparison with some of the other techniques is presented. THis work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grants CDA-9100788 and CDA-9200371.