Synchronization Mechanism for Timed/Untimed Mixed-Signal System Level Design Environment

Yu LIU
Satoshi KOMATSU
Masahiro FUJITA

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E89-A    No.4    pp.1018-1026
Publication Date: 2006/04/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1093/ietfec/e89-a.4.1018
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Selected Papers from the 18th Workshop on Circuits and Systems in Karuizawa)
Category: 
Keyword: 
AMS extension,  system level design language,  timed/untimed,  mixed-signal,  synchronization,  SpecC language,  

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Summary: 
Recently, system level design languages (SLDL), which can describe both hardware and software aspects of the design, are receiving attention. Mixed-signal extensions of SLDL enable current discrete-oriented SLDLs to describe and simulate not only digital systems but also digital-analog mixed-signal systems. The synchronization between discrete and continuous behaviors is widely regarded as a critical part in the extensions. In this paper, we present an event-driven synchronization mechanism for both timed and untimed system level designs through which discrete and continuous behaviors are synchronized via AD events and DA events. We also demonstrate how the synchronization mechanism can be incorporated into the kernel of SLDL, such as SpecC. In the extended kernel, a new simulation cycle, the AMS cycle, is introduced. Three case studies show that the extended SpecC-based system level design environment using our synchronization mechanism works well with timed/untimed mixed-signal system level description.


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