📚 Vol. 6, No. 5 📅 2026 📄 Pages: 34 - 52 🔗 DOI: 10.52688/201577

Reinforcement Learning-Guided High-Level Synthesis Optimization for Energy-Efficient Operator Fusion in Systolic Arrays: An Analytical Evaluation

✍️ Authors

Zahraa Jawad Kadhim Corresponding

📖 Abstract

The problem of mapping complex deep neural network (DNN) computational graphs onto systolic arrays is not easy as moving memory data outside the chip can lead to energy consumption; the conventional High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools rely on the user-specified pragmas and fusion rules heuristically. In order to overcome this, the authors developed an advanced reinforcement learning (RL)-guided HLS framework (RL-HLS) based on graphs; this solution is capable of performing both horizontal and vertical operation fusion and defining microarchitectural HLS rules in accordance with the constraints set on energy, latency, and Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) resources. To achieve this goal, the authors implemented a Graph Isomorphism Network (GIN) algorithm to describe the states of graphs; then, they used a hierarchical Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) policy to investigate the design space. According to the results obtained from trial runs with General Matrix Multiplication (GEMM), ResNet-18, ResNet-50, MobileNetV3, and Vision Transformer (ViT) patch-embedding tasks, the authors managed to cut the power consumption by 82.7% on average, reduce the latency by 89.9%, and increase Processing Element (PE) utilization from 7.4% to 69%.
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🔑 Keywords

Reinforcement learning High-level synthesis Operator fusion Systolic arrays Energy-efficient dnn acceleration.

📋 Publication Information

Volume
6
Issue
5
Year
2026
Page Range
34 - 52
DOI
10.52688/201577
Publication Date
2026.09.08

🏛️ Author Affiliation

Computer Center, Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq

📝 How to Cite this Article

Zahraa Jawad Kadhim. (2026). Reinforcement Learning-Guided High-Level Synthesis Optimization for Energy-Efficient Operator Fusion in Systolic Arrays: An Analytical Evaluation. Journal of Positive Sciences (JPS), 6(5), 34 - 52. https://doi.org/10.52688/259jps/201577