Hercules: Efficient Verification of High-Level Synthesis Designs with FPGA Acceleration

High-Level Synthesis (HLS) enables software engineers to create intricate digital circuit designs using high-level languages like C/C++. While HLS tools can perform functional verification using C/C++ simulation, it is harder to verify that the generated RTL is also correct. This problem is exacerbated for designs which include HLS-generated IPs, such as PCIe or DDR interfaces, or hand-written RTL. While it is possible to perform cycle-accurate verification using C/RTL co-simulation, conventional methods are both slow and typically only focus on unit-level verification which can make it harder to identify the root cause of a bug.