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SystemC from scratch. Part 1
I have been struggling with Verilog and VHDL for more than 15 years. It is time to take a step up on the abstraction ladder. You are welcome to join me, I have decided to learn SystemC.
SystemC
SystemC is a single, unified design and verification language that expresses architectural and other system-level attributes in the form of open-source C++ classes. It enables design and verification at the system level, independent of any detailed hardware and software implementation, as well as enabling co-verification with RTL design.
This higher level of abstraction enables considerably faster, more productive architectural trade-off analysis, design, and redesign than is possible at the more detailed RT level. Furthermore, verification of system architecture and other system-level attributes is orders of magnitude faster than that at the pin-accurate, timing-accurate RT level.
More information can be found here: http://www.systemc.org
C++
C or C++ are the language choice for software algorithm and interface specifications because they provide the control and data abstractions necessary to develop compact and efficient system descriptions. Most designers are familiar with these languages and the large number of development tools associated with them.
The SystemC Class Library provides the necessary constructs to model system architecture including hardware timing, concurrency, and reactive behavior that are missing in standard C++. Adding these constructs to C would require proprietary extensions to the language, which is not an acceptable solution for the industry. The C++ object-oriented programming language provides the ability to extend the language through classes, without adding new syntactic constructs. SystemC provides these necessary classes and allows designers to continue to use the familiar C++ language and development tools.
Starting from scratch
I hope you are not to confused after reading this text. We will start from scratch and use as many examples as possible to illustrate all the features of SystemC. I have done some C programming but I have no experience from C++ or SystemC, I promise you. But first some history.
SystemC evolution
The SystemC Class Library has been developed to support system level design. It runs on both PC and UNIX platforms, and is freely downloadable from the web.
The class library is being released in stages. The first stage, release 1.0 (presently at version 1.0.2) provides all the necessary modelling facilities to describe systems similar to those which can be described using a hardware description language, such as VHDL. Version 1.0 provides a simulation kernel, data types appropriate for fixed point arithmetic, communication channels which behave like pieces of wire (signals), and modules to break down a design into smaller parts.
In Release 2.0 (presently at version 2.2.0), the class library has been extensively re-written to provide an upgrade path into true system level design. Features that were "built-in" to version 1.0, such as signals, are now built upon an underlying structure of channels, interfaces, and ports. Events have been provided as a primitive means of triggering behaviour, together with a set of primitive channels such as FIFO and mutex. Version 2.0 allows much more powerful modeling to be achieved by modeling at the level of transactions.
Version 2.1 added a number of features including the ability to spawn processes after simulation has started, and extra callbacks into the operation of the simulation kernel.
In 2005 the language was standardized as IEEE 1666-2005. Version 2.2 of the reference implementation of the class library is currently available and has been updated to comply with the IEEE standard.
In future, Version 3.0 of the class library will be extended to cover modeling of operating systems, to support the development of models of embedded software.
It is also possible to provide additional libraries to support a particular design methodology. Examples of this include the SystemC Verification Library (SCV).
The SystemC Class Library has been developed by a group of companies forming the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI). For more information, and to download the freely available source code, visit OSCI.
Tutorials
Esperan http://www.esperan.com/pdf/Esperan_SystemC_tutorial.pdf
Doulos http://www.doulos.com/knowhow/systemc/tutorial/
ASIC World http://www.asic-world.com/systemc/tutorial.html
HT-Lab http://www.ht-lab.com/howto/vh2sc_tut/vh2sc_tut.html
Electrosoft http://electrosofts.com/systemc/index.html
SCLive http://sclive.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/systemc-tutorial-threads-methods-and-sc_spawn/
Books
• Bhasker, Jayram. A SystemC Primer. Star Galaxy Publishing, 2002.
• Grotker, Thorsten, Stan Liao, Grant Martin, and Stuart Swan. System Design with SystemC. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
• SystemC Golden Reference Guide. Doulos, 2002.
• SystemC 2.2 Library. This document is available at http://www.systemc.org of the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI).
• IEEE Standard SystemC Language Reference Manual. This document is also available at http://www.systemc.org of the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI).
More books can be found at Amazon.
This was all for to today. I'll be back.
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