Research on high-level synthesis started over twenty years ago, but lower-level tools were not available to seriously support the insertion of high-level synthesis into the mainstream design methodology. Since then, substantial progress has been made in formulating and understanding the basic concepts in high-level synthesis. Although many open problems remain, high-level synthesis has matured.

High-Level Synthesis: Introduction to Chip and System Design presents a summary of the basic concepts and results and defines the remaining open problems. This is the first textbook on high-level synthesis and includes the basic concepts, the main algorithms used in high-level synthesis and a discussion of the requirements and essential issues for high-level synthesis systems and environments. A reference text like this will allow the high-level synthesis community to grow and prosper in the future.