Comparisons of different approaches of realizing IP block configuration in SystemC

Abstract

SystemC is a quasi open source event driven HDL (hardware description language) reference simulator which was introduced in September 1999 from the OSCI. At first, it meant to be a replacement for VHDL, and, although SystemC can be use for RTL modeling, it is now envisioned by the community as a high level system simulator. SystemC inherits all the properties, methodologies and mechanics of its bases (C and C++) which can be seen as macro-assemblers. This has the positive effect of having a lot of freedom in manners of doing things. This freedom can be beneficial because a given methodology can be chosen accordingly and more appropriately to the situation. On the other hand, freedom has a cost and a designer or IP (intellectual property) provider can lose a lot of time trying to figure out which methodology best fit his needs. In this paper, we establish a comprehensive list of all the different mechanisms for configuring an IP in SystemC. We then compare the different methods and highlight the ones which would best suite, following our opinions, the IP development process and publishing cases.