Standard-compliant Parallel SystemC simulation of Loosely-Timed Transaction Level Models

Abstract

To face the growing complexity of System-on-Chips (SoCs) and their tight time-to-market constraints, Virtual Prototyping (VP) tools based on SystemC/TLM must get faster while keeping accuracy. However, the Accellera SystemC reference implementation remains sequential and cannot leverage the multiple cores of modern workstations. In this paper, we present a new implementation of a parallel and standard-compliant SystemC kernel, reaching unprecedented performances. By coupling a parallel SystemC kernel and memory access monitoring, we are able to keep SystemC atomic thread evaluation while leveraging the available host cores. Evaluations show a $\times$ 19 speed-up compared to the Accellera SystemC kernel using 33 host cores reaching speeds above 2000 Million simulated Instructions Per Second (MIPS).