Implementing Recursive Algorithms within Hardware using Finite State Machines

This paper proposes a method of combining the concepts of recursive algorithms and functional programming in hardware design. Though recursion is readily available in functional programming languages, a translation step is required to convert the recursion in such functional program to a synthesizable hardware specification. This proposal uses the idea of Finite State Machines used in [5], combined with the Haskell to VHDL compiler proposed in [1]. As a conclusion, a short proof of concept of the framework is given, along with an example algorithm (a naive fibonacci sequence implementation) in plain Haskell, using types that can easily be converted to a CλaSH compliant subset of Haskell.