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The performance of pipelined datapath implementations is measured basically by three parameters: the clock cycle length, the initiation interval between successive iterations (inverse of the throughput) and the iteration time (turn-around time). In this paper we present a new method for computing performance bounds of pipelined implementations:

• • Given an iterative behavior, a set of resource constraints and a target initiation interval, we derive a lower bound on the iteration time achievable by any pipelined implementation.
• • Given an iterative behavior and a set of resource constraints, we derive a lower bound on the initiation interval achievable by any pipelined implementation.

The method has a low complexity and it handles behavioral specifications containing loop statements with interiteration data dependency and …