Review Period for Draft Standard for TLM Closes Successfully

San Jose, CA — The Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) today announced that over 1,400 users from around the world have downloaded its new draft standard for transaction-level modeling (TLM). The new draft standard further increases tool interoperability for Virtual Platforms containing memory-mapped busses and on-chip communication networks. In addition, it provides the essential framework needed for model exchange within companies and across the intellectual property (IP) supply chain. Public review of the TLM-2 Draft 2 kit was completed January 31. Feedback by the SystemC community has been overwhelmingly positive.

"Responses to our request for comments on TLM-2 since its release in December 2007 have come in from companies throughout the worldwide SystemC ecosystem," said Michael Meredith, president of OSCI. "Many of them offered significant and timely ideas for improvement, and we are committed to reviewing and addressing all suggestions received in this process. During the TLM-2 Draft 2 kit development, experts from over 18 SystemC user companies, ESL tool developers, and IP providers, including OSCI members ARM, Cadence, CoWare, Doulos, ESLX, GreenSocs, Infineon, NXP, STMicroelectronics and STARC, provided their input aimed at refining the interoperability benefits of the emerging standard."

Suggestions received during the public comment period for improving TLM-2 will be reviewed by the OSCI TLM Working Group, which will make pertinent refinements to the standard as it advances toward a final TLM kit later this year. The TLM-2 draft 2 kit is made available under open-source license and includes a requirements specification, documentation, library and examples. To download, visit systemc.org.

Details of TLM-2 Draft 2 Feedback
Designed for use with IEEE Std. 1666^TM-2005, "Standard SystemC Language Reference Manual" and OSCI's standard TLM-1 transport API, TLM-2 focuses on the modeling of systems based on memory-mapped busses and on-chip communication networks. Models have been categorized according to a range of criteria and interfaces are differentiated by untimed, loosely timed, and approximately timed coding styles.

"TLM-2 is a big step towards an SoC design ecosystem for virtual prototyping in which SystemC models can easily be exchanged and configured to the benefit of system architects, design implementation and verification teams," said Ralph von Vignau, senior director, NXP Semiconductors and OSCI board member. "Virtual prototyping is directly affected by having a strong modeling foundation that enables an optimal reuse of models and modeling effort across different use cases."

Details of the contents of the OSCI TLM-2 draft standard will be presented during a tutorial entitled, "OSCI TLM-2 in 2008: A Leap Forward for Transaction-Level Modeling," to be held on February 19 from 1:30 to 5:00 PM at the Design and Verification Conference (DVCon) in San Jose, California. A similar workshop will be held during the Design Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) Conference on March 11 in Munich, Germany.

Road to Standardization
OSCI TLM-2 is expected to be finalized by June. Work will then begin on formalizing a TLM-2 language reference manual (LRM). Once the LRM is complete, OSCI intends to offer the document to the IEEE for standardization. To download a presentation describing specific feedback from the public review of TLM-2, visit the Systemc.org Web site.