I’d like to share my two cents about jumping the gap from writing code to writing code to infer hardware (having done it myself). As some others mentioned, the

I’d like to share my two cents about jumping the gap from writing code to writing code to infer hardware (having done it myself). As some others mentioned, the most important distinction is knowing what the logic synthesizer and place/route tools (could be looked at as compiler passes) can do to infer circuits from you code. Fundamentally you’re designing digital logic circuits and subsequently describing them in code. So go get an introductory digital logic text book and read it. (I.e. Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals, Mano & Kime) You’ll need to understand the basics of “timing” of data propagating through logic circuits. Further into the book you’ll get some ideas of basic digital logic patterns. Here’s one nifty trick; if you can make sure that the function to compute the next value of a bit can fit into one lookup table (LUT) you can be pretty sure that your circuit will run fast. For the uninitiated, a typical lut has about 4 to 6 inputs connected to a single bit memory (flip flop) on the output. You can try to hack it with OpenCL, and you may have some success. But do not expect GPU-like ndrange kernel duplication to get you very far. Instead use single work item kernels and make a systolic array. Look up systolic array matrix multiplier. Also, FPGA tools suuuuck compared to software tools! So expect bizarre pains in the but. Good luck! It is doable.