What is Distributed Pipelining?

Distributed pipelining, or register retiming, is a speed optimization that moves existing delays in a design to reduce the critical path while preserving functional behavior. This optimization moves the delays within a subsystem while preserving the hierarchy.

The HDL Coder™ software uses an adaptation of the Leiserson-Saxe retiming algorithm.

Benefits and Costs of Distributed Pipelining

Distributed pipelining can reduce your design’s critical path, enabling you to use a higher clock rate and increase throughput.

However, distributed pipelining requires your design to contain a number of delays. If you need to insert additional delays in your design to enable distributed pipelining, this increases the area and the initial latency of your design.

Selected Bibliography

Leiserson, C.E, and James B. Saxe. “Retiming Synchronous Circuitry.” Algorithmica. Vol. 6, Number 1, 1991, pp. 5-35.