Data extraction from SystemC designs using debug symbols and the SystemC API

Due to the ever increasing complexity of hardware and hardware/software co-designs, developers strive for higher levels of abstractions in the early stages of the design flow. To address these demands, design at the Electronic System Level (ESL) has been introduced. SystemC currently is the “defacto standard” for ESL design. The extraction of data from system designs written in SystemC is thereby crucial e.g. for the proper understanding of a given system. However, no satisfactory support of reflection/introspection of SystemC has been provided yet. Previously proposed methods for this purpose either focus on static aspects only, restrict the language means of SystemC, or rely on modifications of the compiler and/or parser. In this work, we present an approach that overcomes these limitations. A methodology is introduced which enables full extraction of the desired information from a given SystemC design without changing the SystemC library or the compiler. For this purpose, debug symbols generated by the compiler and SystemC API calls are exploited. The proposed system retrieves both, static and dynamic information. A comparison to previously proposed solutions shows the benefits of the proposed method, while its application is illustrated by means of a visualization engine.