Introduction to the SystemC AMS DRAFT standard

Embedded HW/SW systems interact more and more tightly with their analog physical environment. This leads to systems in which digital HW/SW is functionally interwoven with analog and mixed -signal blocks such as RF interfaces, power electronics, or sensors and actuators. We call such systems Embedded Analog/Mixed-Signal (E-AMS) systems. A challenge for the development of E -AMS systems is to understand the interaction between HW/SW and the analog and mixed-signal subsystems (e.g. power drivers, sensors, RF circuits) at architecture level. This requires means for modeling and simulating the interacting analog/mixed-signal systems and HW/SW systems at functional and architecture level. SystemC supports modeling of HW/SW systems from the abstract algorithm levevel down to RTL by providing a discrete event (DE) simulation framework. Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) allows designers to perform abstract modeling, simulation and design of HW/SW system architectures. However, the SystemC simulation kernel has not been designed for the modeling and simulation of analog, continuous-time systems.