SVE: a methodology for the design of protocol dominated digital systems

In this article an efficient methodology is proposed for the SystemC based design of digital systems which are protocol dominated, such as communication networks based on serial protocols. In the development process of such systems a large amount of design effort has to be put into specification and implementation of protocol related hardware and software. The methodology presented here enables an abstract specification and simulation of complex frame-oriented protocols as well as synthesis of controller hardware from such specifications in the context of a SystemC system model. The protocol specification language is implemented as an extension library to SystemC 2.0. Using the USB 2.0 protocol as a modeling example we demonstrate the efficiency and benefits of the proposed methodology.