Heterogeneous Specification with HetSC and SystemC-AMS: Widening the Support of MoCs in SystemC

This chapter provides a first general approach to the cooperation of SystemC-AMS and HetSC (Heterogeneous SystemC) heterogeneous specification methodologies. Their joint usage enables the development of SystemC specifications supporting a wide range of Models of Computation (MoCs). This is becoming more and more necessary for building complete specifications of embedded systems, which are increasingly heterogeneous (they include the software control part, digital hardware accelerators, the analog front-end, etc.). This chapter identifies the syntactical and semantical issues involved in the specifications which include facilities from both, SystemC-AMS and HetSC methodologies. This work, which is an extension of the paper presented in FDL’07 [7], considers the availability and suitability of the MoC interface facilities provided by both methodologies, especially those of SystemC-AMS, which will be proposed for future standardization. Some practical aspects, such as the current set of MoCs covered by the methodologies and the compatibility on the installation of their associated libraries are also covered by this chapter. A complete illustrative example is used to show HetSC and SystemC-AMS cooperation.

[1]  D. A. Sinclair.  Electronic Design Automation , 1982 .

[2]  Edward A. Lee,et al.  Static Scheduling of Synchronous Data Flow Programs for Digital Signal Processing , 1989, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[3]  Edward A. Lee,et al.  A framework for comparing models of computation , 1998, IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst..

[4]  B. Martin.  Electronic design automation [1999 technology analysis and forecast] , 1999 .

[5]  L. Geppert.  Electronic design automation [Technology 2000 analysis and forecast] , 2000 .

[6]  Edward A. Lee,et al.  Ptolemy II, Heterogeneous Concurrent Modeling and Design in JAVA , 2001 .

[7]  Christoph Grimm,et al.  Towards analog and mixed-signal SOC design with systemC-AMS , 2004, Proceedings. DELTA 2004. Second IEEE International Workshop on Electronic Design, Test and Applications.

[8]  Hiren D. Patel,et al.  Implementing Multi-MoC Extensions for SystemC : Adding CSP & FSM Kernels for Heterogeneous Modeling , 2004 .

[9]  Fernando Herrera,et al.  Single Source Design Environment for Embedded Systems Based on SystemC , 2004, Des. Autom. Embed. Syst..

[10]  Sandeep K. Shukla,et al.  SystemC Kernel extensions for heterogeneous system modeling - a framework for multi-MoC modeling and simulation , 2004 .

[11]  Fernando Herrera,et al.  A framework for embedded system specification under different models of computation in SystemC , 2006, 2006 43rd ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference.

[12]  Christian Haubelt,et al.  Efficient Representation and Simulation of Model-Based Designs , 2006, FDL.

[13]  Jan Haase,et al.  A general approach to the interoperability of HetSC and SystemC-AMS , 2007, FDL.

[14]  Jan Haase,et al.  Using converter channels within a top-down design flow in SystemC , 2007 .

[15]  A Next-Generation Design Framework for Platform-Based Design , 2007 .