Proposed Standard Provides Definitive Description of SystemC

The Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) an independent non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting and advancing SystemC as an industry standard language for electronic system-level design, today announced that it has officially released the Language Reference Manual (LRM) for SystemC 2.1 to the IEEE for review. The LRM is the definitive description of SystemC 2.1. The purpose of the standard is to provide a precise and complete definition of the SystemC library so that implementation can be developed with reference to the SystemC standard alone.

The SystemC 2.1 LRM is the result of more than a year of intensive development on the part of the OSCI technical committee.

"The beginning of the IEEE standardization of SystemC with the release of the LRM to the IEEE is a great milestone for OSCI. The development of a document that adequately defines the syntax and semantics of any language is notoriously difficult. We would like to recognise the dedication of our members to this effort and Doulos for their significant contribution writing this document" said OSCI chairman Alain Clouard.

Victor Berman, chairman of the P1666 WG at IEEE noted that his technical team has worked closely with OSCI during the development of the LRM and that its contents have been incorporated into the draft standard proposal already.

"Balloting of the standard is scheduled to begin shortly following the final approval of the document by the working group at a meeting to be held on June 15 in Anaheim during DAC," said Mr Berman. "The proposed standard is following the fast track procedures of the IEEE and final approval could occur as early as September 2005." Berman added, "The final draft of the SystemC 2.1 LRM has been under review for several months, so it is anticipated that there will only be a few minor changes to the document before its approval as an IEEE standard".

The SystemC 2.1 LRM defines the public interface to the SystemC class library, and defines constraints on how those classes may be used. It provides an unambiguous definition of what is required to accurately implement SystemC tools.

Many OSCI members who are part of the EDA industry have been working with this standard during its development and have indicated plans to update tools to support SystemC 2.1 as defined in the LRM in the next few months.

The SystemC 2.1 LRM is available at the OSCI web site at www.systemc.org It should prove invaluable to implementers of SystemC 2.1 compliant tools. Users of SystemC will also find this consistent and complete documentation of the public API of SystemC implementations to be of great value.

 

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About SystemC and OSCI

The Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) is an independent, not-for-profit association composed of a broad range of organisations dedicated to supporting and advancing SystemC as an open industry standard for system-level modeling, design and verification. The SystemC language and its proof-of-concept open source implementation can be downloaded at www.systemc.org

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