SystemC:一种新的系统建模语言

SystemC:A New Standard for System-level-design

文章介绍了一种国外正在研究的新的系统建模语言SystemC,因其较好地结合了面向对象的设计方法和硬件建模的特点,从而有望解决系统建模和HW/SW协同设计中等一系列问题。

Huge new design challenges for system-on-chip(SoC)are the result of decreasing time-to-market coupled with rapidly increasing gate counts and embedded software representing50-90percent of the functionality.The exchange of system-level intellectual property(IP)models for creating executable specifications has become a key strategic element for efficient system-to-silicon design flows.Because C and C++are the dominant languages used by chip architects,system engineersand software engineers today,we believe that a C-based approach to hardware-modeling is necessary.This will enable co-design,providing a more natural solution to partitioning functionality between hardware and software.In this paper,we present the design of SystemC,a C++class library that provides the necessary features for modeling design hierarchy,concurrency in hardware.A simple example is included.