Bit-Packing Optimization for StreamIt

Abstract

StreamIt is a language specifically designed for modern streaming applications. A certain important class of these applications operates on streams of bits. This paper presents the motivation for a bit-packing optimization to be implemented in the StreamIt compiler for the RAW Architecture. This technique aims to pack bits into integers so that operations can be performed on multiple bits at once thus increasing the performance of these applications considerably. This paper gives some simple example applications to illustrate the various conditions where this technique can be applied and also analyses some of its limitations.