Open SystemC Initiative Reveals Proposed Extensions for Embedded Analog/Mixed-Signal Applications in SystemC

New Whitepaper Available for Download at www.systemc.org

Design Automation Conference 2008
ANAHEIM, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--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 release of a whitepaper introducing system-level design and modeling of embedded Analog/Mixed-Signal (AMS) systems using SystemC AMS extensions. The whitepaper can be downloaded at www.systemc.org. The whitepaper will also be available at the 7th Symposium on Electronic System-Level Design with SystemC, co-located with the Design Automation Conference held this week in Anaheim, Calif. (http://www.systemc.org/news/events/dac2008).

The whitepaper presents proposed AMS extensions being developed by the OSCI AMS Working Group, offering unique capabilities for the design and modeling of embedded analog/mixed-signal applications at various levels of design abstraction. These AMS extensions will provide a uniform and standardized modeling approach, which can be used in combination with digitally oriented ESL design methods, supporting a design refinement methodology for functional modeling, architecture exploration and virtual prototyping of embedded analog/mixed-signal systems.

“The AMS extensions will be a valuable asset to the SystemC standard and will form the foundation for new AMS modeling methodologies based on SystemC,” said Michael Meredith, President of OSCI. “With these AMS features in SystemC, OSCI is addressing the system-level design and modeling needs for telecommunications, automotive and imaging sensor applications, which are in fact analog/mixed-signal dominated systems. We are very pleased to see growth of the SystemC community in these new market segments.”

The whitepaper will motivate the design and modeling requirements and use cases for embedded AMS systems. An overview of the SystemC AMS language and its architecture is given, and how it can be used to create models at different levels of abstraction. An illustrative example explains how to apply these AMS extensions for different use cases.

“The whitepaper gives the SystemC community a first glance at the AMS language constructs which are currently being defined in the AMS Language Reference Manual,” said Martin Barnasconi, Chairman of OSCI’s AMS Working Group. “A draft AMS Language Reference Manual is under review within OSCI. We aim at releasing a first public draft later this year. The whitepaper shows our line of thinking with respect to the modeling formalisms and elements we propose as an extension to the SystemC standard.”

SystemC users, system architects, ESL tool developers and AMS IP providers are encouraged to start interacting with the AMS Working Group to discuss the concepts introduced in the whitepaper. A new AMS discussion forum is now available at www.systemc.org. Members of OSCI can participate in the AMS Working Group, which will continue to steer the direction of the standardization of the AMS extensions and language reference manual.

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 language built in C++ that spans from concept to implementation in hardware and software. For further information about SystemC and OSCI visit www.systemc.org.

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