Sorry, you missed Oktoberfest (which is mostly in September anyway). But come to Munich in October for SystemC Evolution Day—a workshop on the evolution of SystemC standards held in Munich, Germany on October 18th. It’s a full day workshop, and the second iteration of a successful first run in May 2016. SystemC Evolution Day will feature several in-depth sessions about current and future standardization topics involving SystemC, with the intention of accelerating their progress for inclusion with the Accelera and IEEE standards.
Here’s a copy of the agenda:
SystemC Evolution Day will feature—as shown on the agenda—four technical sessions. These sessions discuss new ideas and suggestions for the SystemC community. Here’s a quick run-down of each:
#1: Checkpointing and SystemC – How Can We Make Them Meet?
Checkpointing technology has been around since the mid-90s. It’s seen wide use in transferring the state of a system between different simulators, saving time in workflows by avoiding time-costly re-dos like rebooting a system, and as a collaboration tool, among others. It’s on the list of features being considered by the SystemC Configuration, Control and Inspection Working Group (CCIWG), but there is more to do. It’s been tough to implement checkpointing in SystemC, mainly due to how it affects model writing. In order for checkpointing to work properly, one would need to be able to save and restore into an entirely different implementation of the same model—something that is currently still in development. This session aims to discuss the challenges around checkpointing in SystemC, and how it can be implemented under current standards.
#2: Standardization Around Registers – What’s Needed?
This session aims to talk about what users expect from register libraries, what needs standardizing, and what advantages standardization brings. Organizations have different register modeling libraries, and users’ expectations will vary to match. The current proposals for standardization are outdated—and they lack the user’s perspective which is needed in order for them to be successful. Here, the session will show some of the proposals offered for register library standardization and gather more of that user perspective from the session attendees.
#3: SystemC Datatypes – a Community Discussion
Since the early 2000s, SystemC users and EDA companies have had different uses for the standard datatypes—customizing the proof-of-concept library, leaving it alone, or re-implementing it completely in the event of simulation needs.
Now, the SystemC Datatypes Sub-Working Group, created by Accellera, seeks to create and define an advanced set of SystemC datatypes, compatible with all user needs. This session aims to take the user community in and discuss the definition of this set with them. Accellera members are encouraged to join the SystemC Datatypes Sub-Working Group, as well.
#4: Throughput Accurate Modeling and Synthesis of Abstract Interfaces
The current SystemC standard doesn’t deal with the modeling and synthesis of abstract interfaces. It addresses signals and ports, but nothing regarding scheduling rules for synthesizing cycle-accurate protocols.
A protocol can be encapsulated in a C++ class with methods that perform transaction-level operations. This a key way to raise the abstraction of an interface. The encapsulation is great, but it doesn’t solve a notable issue: it doesn’t model the interaction of different ports being accessed from a single process as concurrent. One can write behavior in a threat that handles multiple ports, but it reduces the freedom to schedule that port for other uses.
This session aims to alleviate these concerns by discussing the modeling of abstract interfaces and how they result to high-level synthesis.
For the full run-down on all these events, and for additional event details, check out the SystemC Evolution Day page on the Accellera website here.