SystemC finds new horizons

Richard Goering, EE Times
(02/27/2006 9:00 AM EST)

San Jose, Calif. -- An open-source architectural-description language from Brazil that promises to take SystemC in new directions was outlined at the North American SystemC User's Group (Nascug) meeting here last week. SystemC may also extend its reach with a synthesizable subset and a new proposal for an analog/mixed-signal version of the language, other presenters said.

Rodolfo Jardim de Azevedo, assistant professor at the Institute for Computing at the State University of Campinas (Brazil), presented ArchC as a language that provides a fast and easy way to model processors. Built on top of SystemC, ArchC can generate simulators and assemblers. Support is available now for processors including MIPS, Sparc v8, PowerPC and 8051, with ARM support slated for March.

"There's a whole set of tools yet to be defined to go on top of SystemC, and this [ArchC] is an example," said Nascug chairman Jack Donovan. "Everyone is trying to understand ways to do faster modeling."