Portable SystemC-on-a-chip

SystemC allows description of a digital system using traditional programming features as well as spatial connectivity features common in hardware description languages. We describe an approach for in-system emulation of circuits described in SystemC. SystemC emulation provides a number of benefits over synthesis, including fast compilation, faster design time, and lower tool cost. The approach involves a new SystemC bytecode format that executes on an emulation engine running on the microprocessor and/or FPGA of a development platform. Portability is enhanced via a USB flash-drive approach to loading the bytecode format onto the platform. Performance is improved using emulation accelerators on an FPGA. We describe our SystemC-to-bytecode compiler, bytecode format, emulation engine, and emulation accelerators. We illustrate use of the approach on a variety of examples, showing easy porting of a single application across various platforms, and showing emulation speed on an FPGA that is comparable to SystemC execution on a PC.