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SystemC Language Working Group (LWG)

Charter

This group is responsible for the definition and development of the SystemC core language, the foundation on which all other SystemC libraries and functionality are built.

Chair: Laurent Maillet-Contoz, ST Microelectronics
Vice-Chair: Andrew Goodrich, Cadence Design Systems

Recent Activity

Together with the release of IEEE 1666-2011 "Standard SystemC Language Reference Manual," the SystemC Language Working Group (LWG) released version 2.3.0 of the open source proof-of-concept library at no charge to the worldwide electronic design community.  This implementation is fully compatible with IEEE1666-2011 and includes support for transaction-level modeling (TLM), a critical approach to enable high level and more efficient design of complex ICs and SoCs in a single library.

Since then, Three maintenance releases (versions 2.3.1, 2.3.2 and 2.3.3) of the SystemC proof-of-concept implementation have been published, providing a number of new features beyond the current IEEE Std. 1666-2011.  This enables the SystemC community to gain experience from practical use looking towards the next revision of IEEE 1666.

In addition to bug fixes and addressing errata, the most notable new features beyond IEEE Std. 1666-2011 include

  • Initial C++11/14 support (2.3.2)
  • Extended simulation phase callbacks (2.3.1)
  • Initialization of signals at construction time (2.3.1)
  • Extended hierarchical name registry (2.3.2)
  • Improved synchronization mechanism with external processes (2.3.2)
  • Improved sc_time conversions and operations (2.3.1, extended in 2.3.2)
  • Improved error and exception handling (2.3.1, extended in 2.3.2)
  • Improved VCD tracing support, including hierarchical scopes, events and time values (2.3.2)
  • Improved support for dynamically linked TLM-2.0 models, including Windows DLL support (2.3.2)
  • New template-independent interfaces for TLM-2.0 sockets (2.3.2)
  • New optionally bounds TLM-2.0 convenience sockets (2.3.2)
  • New macro SC_NAMED to simplify naming of SystemC objects/events (2.3.3)

The open source proof-of-concept releases were re-licensed under the Apache 2.0 License, enabling easier adoption of parts of the implementation in derived products.  Documentation has been reorganized for clarity, and there is a new document highlighting the features added for compatibility with the latest version of the SystemC standard. The library, installation notes and readme files have been updated to support installation on the latest operating systems and compilers, including support for C++11 and C++14. To ensure a high quality release, the library has been reviewed and tested by members of the SystemC Language Working Group, and feedback from the public review has been incorporated in the release.

Current activities in the LWG are centering around new features enabled by modern C++ language standards (C++11, C++14), improved datatype implementations within a dedicated SystemC Datatypes sub-working group, and extensions towards better integration of the control, configuration and inspection features developed by the SystemC CCI Working Group.

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