Open SystemC Initiative Announces Proposal for Significant Extensions to Transaction-Level Modeling (TLM) Standard

Milestone Release of Draft TLM 2.0 Kit for Public Review Promotes Interoperability

San Jose, Calif. and Grenoble, France (at the ECSI TLM Workshop) – December 4, 2006 – The Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI), an independent non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and advancing SystemC™ as an industry standard language for electronic system-level (ESL) design, today announced the delivery of the Draft SystemC Transaction-Level Modeling (TLM) 2.0 kit, containing proposed extensions to OSCI TLM application programming interface (API) standards, an open-source library implementation, and interoperable modeling examples for world-wide public review by the SystemC community. To download an open source license of the Draft TLM 2.0 kit and library implementation visit www.systemc.org.

“The availability of emerging SystemC TLM 2.0 specifications achieves an important milestone for OSCI and SystemC, significantly advancing the development of industry standard transaction-level interfaces and the interoperability of models needed for design and verification of system-on-chips (SoCs) at the system level,” said Alain Clouard, chairman of OSCI. “We are very pleased with the continued and cooperative efforts between users, tool suppliers and intellectual property suppliers during its development and call upon the broader SystemC community to take part in the review of what we believe is an excellent candidate for a strong and widely adopted TLM standard.”

Design at the transaction-level enables users to efficiently develop SoC virtual prototypes before physical implementation, making it the ideal framework for high-level modeling, software development and system validation. Designed for use with the SystemC IEEE Std. 1666™-2005 language and OSCI’s standard TLM 1.0 transport API, the TLM 2.0 proposal extends the foundation upon which interoperable transaction-level communication can be built.

TLM 2.0 will broaden the standard by defining the content of transactions and how they are moved and controlled within the system. This includes new data structures and APIs for un-timed programmer's view (PV) models of bus and network-on-chip based systems that can be used to enable concurrent development of embedded software and the hardware platform that work together to implement system-on-chip functionality. It also includes data structures and APIs for programmer's view with timing (PVT) models appropriate for architecture design and system performance analysis. The TLM 2.0 draft library also demonstrates a new analysis interface for advanced transaction-level verification environments.

Roadmap for TLM 2.0 Public Review
SystemC users and developers of transaction level tools and models are encouraged to participate in the public review of the TLM 2.0 draft, with the initial period for public review extending through the first week of February, 2007. At that time, the OSCI TLM working group will consolidate feedback. Preparation of an updated final draft specification is slated for April, 2007 with public availability planned in conjunction with the 2007 DATE Conference. This second period of public review will continue through mid-May, 2007, allowing any remaining feedback to be incorporated into the fully documented TLM 2.0 Language Reference Manual standard and open-source library release by the 2007 Design Automation Conference in June.

About Transaction-Level Modeling (TLM)
Design at the transaction-level enables users to efficiently develop SoC virtual prototypes to assist in architecture analysis and enable early software development, before any prototype can be completed. Transaction-level models can be used as golden reference models and directly embedded into functional verification environments, maximizing return on investment made in high-level modeling. In addition, transaction-level modeling enables the simulation performance required to meaningfully validate system functionality and co-simulate hardware and software. High simulation speed also allows the validation of intellectual property (IP) in the context of the system. SystemC’s ability to effectively span abstraction levels from algorithm to TLM to RTL makes it the ideal framework for high-level modeling and design as well as system validation.

Technical Working Group Achievements
OSCI member companies participating in the development of SystemC TLM standards represent a broad range of systems, semiconductor, IP, and EDA suppliers who have joined together to support this effort. For a list of members, visit http://www.systemc.org/web/sitedocs/who_we_are.html

In addition to TLM, working groups within OSCI continue to actively drive the advancement of standards that complement and promote use of IEEE Std. 1666 SystemC. Current achievements include:

· The release of the SystemC 2.2 open-source proof-of-concept library for public review, providing updates to conform to the IEEE 1666 SystemC Language Reference Manual.
· The release of the SystemC Verification Library (SCV) V21.0p2 which is compatible with current SystemC V2.1v1 open-source proof-of-concept library as well as with the SystemC 2.2 draft.
· Public availability of a draft document defining the synthesizable subset of SystemC.
· Formation of a working group to develop standards for Analog/Mixed-Signal design in SystemC.

More information on these specifications, along with the TLM 2.0 kit proposal, are available at www.systemc.org.

About SystemC and OSCI
The Open SystemC™ Initiative (OSCI) is an independent, not-for-profit association composed of a broad range of organizations dedicated to supporting and advancing SystemC as an open industry standard for system-level modeling, design and verification. SystemC is a C++ class library that supports design from concept to implementation in hardware and software. The IEEE Standards Association recently approved the standard for the SystemC library as IEEE Std. 1666™-2005. As a result of a partnership between OSCI and the IEEE, the IEEE 1666™-2005 Standard SystemC Language Reference Manual (LRM) is now available free of charge on the IEEE website at http://standards.ieee.org/getieee/1666/index.html. For further information about SystemC and OSCI visit www.systemc.org.