The Open SystemC Initiative Announces Availability of the SystemC Transaction-level Modeling Standard with Broad Industry Support

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 6, 2005--The Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) today announced the delivery of the SystemC(TM) Transaction-level Modeling (TLM) Standard 1.0. The availability of a standard SystemC TLM library promotes industry-wide re-use of transaction-level Intellectual Property (IP) and the development of tools to provide a rich design environment for transaction-level design and verification.

The new TLM standard defines application programming interfaces (APIs) and provides a library that implements a foundation layer upon which interoperable transaction-level communication can be built. The standard, along with the library implementation can be downloaded under the open source license at www.systemc.org.

Design at the transaction-level enables users to efficiently develop system-on-chip (SoC) virtual prototypes to assist in architecture analysis and enable early software development, before availability of any physical prototype. Transaction-level IP models are also ideal golden reference models that can be directly embedded into functional verification environments, maximizing investments in high-level models. In addition, transaction-level modeling increases simulation performance more than 100 fold making it possible to meaningfully validate system functionality. These high simulation speeds are also required for the validation of IP in the context of the system. SystemC's ability to effectively span abstraction levels from algorithm to TLM and RTL makes it the ideal framework for high-level modeling as well as system validation.

"The SystemC TLM 1.0 kit was unanimously approved by the OSCI's Steering Group and Board for public release on the SystemC website," said Mark Milligan, OSCI president. "We are pleased to note that today it is in use at major companies, with the intent to use it as a corporate-wide standard."

"More than 50 TLM working-group members have worked for over two years in development and review of the standard APIs and open source library. OSCI is delivering a canonical TLM foundation that enables the industry to widely adopt Transaction-Level Modeling techniques," said Frank Ghenassia, OSCI TLM Working Group chair.

"This standard is the result of a number of companies cooperating in the definition and necessary documentation. It is another step in enabling both ecosystems and interoperability between companies to grow. Building on this standard, system-level simulation will take another step in becoming an accepted phase in the development of complex SoC system designs," said Ralph von Vignau, an OSCI Board member.

With this new standard being met with support from a broad range of semiconductor companies and EDA suppliers, users have a wide choice in vendors supporting this flow. Companies and organizations endorsing this standard include Cadence Design Systems, CoWare, Forte Design Systems, Mentor Graphics, Royal Philips Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, Inc., Atrenta, Inc., Calypto Design Systems, Inc., Celoxica Ltd, ChipVision Design Automation AG, Synfora, Inc., Summit Design Automation, Inc and OCP-IP.

To download an open source license of the new TLM standard and library implementation visit www.systemc.org.

About SystemC and OSCI

The Open SystemC(TM) 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. The SystemC language and its proof-of-concept open source implementation can be downloaded at www.systemc.org.

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