SystemQ: A Queuing-Based Approach to Architecture Performance Evaluation with SystemC

Platform architectures for modern embedded systems are increasingly heterogeneous and parallel. Early design decisions, such as the allocation of hardware resources and the partitioning of functionality onto architecture building blocks, become even more complex and important for the resulting design quality. To effectively support designers during the concept phase we base our design flow SystemQ on queuing systems. We show how by starting with a performance model the system's behavior and structure can be refined systematically. SystemQ is implemented in SystemC and seamlessly supports the refinement of SystemQ models down to established transaction and RT levels. Compared with existing approaches, SystemQ's formalism exposes transaction scheduling as one key aspect of the system's performance and allows the modeling of time and resource workload-dependent behavior. A case study underpins the usefulness of SystemQ's approach by evaluating a network access platform at three refinement levels.