Closing the gap between UML-based modeling, simulation and synthesis of combined HW/SW systems

UML is widely applied for the specification and modeling of software and some studies have demonstrated that it is applicable for HW/SW codesign. However, in this area there is still a big gap from UML modeling to SystemC-based verification and synthesis environments. This paper presents an efficient approach to bridge this gap in the context of Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC) design. We propose a framework for the seamless integration of a customized SysML entry with code generation for HW/SW cosimulation and high-level FPGA synthesis. For this, we extended the SysML UML profile by SystemC and synthesis capabilities. Two case studies demonstrate the applicability of our approach.