A SystemC Refinement Methodology for Embedded Software

process: Designers must define higher abstraction levels that allow system modeling. They must use description languages that handle both hardware and software components to describe communication between these components and capture constraints. For instance, a transactionlevel model (TLM) abstracts the functionalities of a hardware-software system, improving designer productivity. Rather than dealing with numerous microarchitecture details, as they do with RTL models, designers using a TLM can rapidly design a macroarchitecture meeting expected performance requirements. To address abstraction in the context of platformbased design, researchers have introduced the concept of the virtual platform.3 Virtual platforms are very highlevel functional models of the SoC with no specific implementation details. Modern design tools based on these virtual platforms must support IP block integration, architectural exploration, and communication mapping. Another solution to the abstraction problem...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: DT
• Authors: Jérôme Chevalier, Maxime de Nanclas, Luc Filion, Olivier Benny, Mathieu Rondonneau, Guy Bois, El Mostapha Aboulhamid
• Keywords: Abstraction, Design, Designer, DT 2006