Evaluation of an object-oriented hardware design methodology for automotive applications

In this paper we present results in using the new object-oriented design approach OSSS (ODETTE system synthesis subset). The methodology and tools of the ODETTE (object-oriented co-design and functional test techniques) project have been developed within the context of the IST programme of the European Commission. Main focus of OSSS lies in the field of hardware design and in synthesis capability. The strategy is based on an extension of the synthesizable subset of standard systemC. The approach supports real object-oriented and synthesizable design features like classes, inheritance, templates, polymorphism and global object access. Therefore OSSS promises high efficiency in sense of capability to handle complex designs, faster development time, improved code quality and faster time to market. In contrast, standard systemC is also based on C++ constructs, but no object-oriented constructs are available yet for a synthesizable system description. We have evaluated OSSS on an automotive design example. It was chosen for the implementation of a component that is part of all video projects: A camera's exposure control unit (ExpoCU). The first main goal that was achieved is a synthesizable design by the automatic generation of an FPGA netlist from an OSSS description. Furthermore we have also proved the methodology to fulfill industrial requirements such as usability for complex system development, integration of existing IP, improved code quality and decreased development effort. Comparison will be done against existing VHDL based design flow. We especially focus on the implementation and testability by comparing the new object-oriented synthesis approach with a standard VHDL flow by laying emphasis on synthesizability. OSSS and equivalent kinds of methodology show a large potential to handle new generations of complex HW-SW systems. Moreover the gap between increasing design complexity and available methodologies already now gets bigger and bigger and thus needs to be closed by new solutions such as OSSS.