High-level System Modeling with SystemC and TLM: Introduction and practical application of an Electronic System Level design flow

Traditional methodologies increasingly fail to tackle the challenge of contemporary embedded system design. The drive towards shorter product life cycles and time-to-market necessitates an increase of productivity. Electronic System Level Design (ESL) addresses this issue by modeling and abstraction. The Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) standard, based on the system modeling language SystemC, is targeted at the design of fast virtual system prototypes that allow early hardware/software co-development as well as architectural and performance exploration. This book by the author Christian Widtmann presents the methodology of ESL design based on transaction models. It describes the features of SystemC, the concepts of the thereupon defined modeling standard and the tools available to the designer. In the course of a case study the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is refined from its mathematical description to an architectural model. The presented design flow includes a number of modeling steps that illustrate the capabilities of the different modeling styles. Particular focus is laid on linking theoretical concepts to their practical implementation.