SystemVerilogCSP: Modeling Digital Asynchronous Circuits Using SystemVerilog Interfaces

This paper describes how to model channel-based digital asynchronous circuits using SystemVerilog interfaces that implement CSP-like communication events. The interfaces enable explicit handshaking of channel wires as well as abstract CSP events. This enables abstract connections between modules that are described at different levels of abstraction facilitating both verification and design. We explain how to model one-to-one, one-to-many, one-to-any, any-to-one and synchronised channels. Moreover, we describe how to split communication actions into multiple parts to model more accurately less concurrent handshaking protocols that are commonly found in many asynchronous pipelines.

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