Automatic SystemC TLM generation for custom communication platforms

Abstract

This paper presents a tool for automatic generation of transaction level models (TLMs) in SystemC for MPSoC designs with custom communication platforms. The MPSoC platform is captured as a graphical net-list of components, busses and bridge elements. The application is captured as C processes mapped to the platform components. Once the platform is decided, a set of transaction level communication APIs is automatically generated for each application C process. After the C code is input, an executable SystemC TLM of the design is automatically generated using our tool. This TLM can be executed using standard SystemC simulators for early functional verification of the design. Although, several TLM styles and standards have been proposed in the past, our approach differs in the fact that the designers do not need to understand the underlying SystemC code or TLM modeling style to verify that their application executes on the selected platform. Another key advantage of our tool is that the platform can be easily customized for the application and a new TLM for that platform can be automatically generated. The TLM can be used to program the custom platform early in the design cycle before the components are available. Our experimental results demonstrate that for large industrial applications such as MP3 decoder and H.264, high-speed TLMs can be generated for several platforms in a few seconds.