On the use of C++ for system-on-chip design

To model complex embedded systems at a high level of abstraction existing languages usually stress the specification of functionality. Our experience with industrial strength designs, however, shows that structure and timing must be considered from the beginning, and refined concurrently with functionality. We present a C++ library for the modeling of concurrency and timing in an executable system model. Together with the built-in extensibility of C++ this library is the foundation for a rich set of primitives supporting different modeling paradigms in a single language framework. This allows designers to start with a conceptual system capturing functionality, structure and timing as desired and gradually refine it to a fully detailed implementable model using the most appropriate modeling paradigm for each phase and part of the design.