Bridging MoCs in SystemC specifications of heterogeneous systems

In order to get an efficient specification and simulation of a heterogeneous system, the choice of an appropriate model of computation (MoC) for each system part is essential. The choice depends on the design domain (e.g., analogue or digital), and the suitable abstraction level used to specify and analyse the aspects considered to be important in each system part. In practice, MoC choice is implicitly made by selecting a suitable language and a simulation tool for each system part. This approach requires the connection of different languages and simulation tools when the specification and simulation of the system are considered as a whole. SystemC is able to support a more unified specification methodology and simulation environment for heterogeneous system, since it is extensible by libraries that support additional MoCs. A major requisite of these libraries is to provide means to connect system parts which are specified using different MoCs. However, these connection means usually do not provide enough flexibility to select and tune the right conversion semantic in amixed-level specification, simulation, and refinement process. In this article, converter channels, a flexible approach for MoC connection within a SystemC environment consisting of three extensions, namely, SystemC-AMS, HetSC, and OSSS+R, are presented.This work is supported by the FP6-2005-IST-5 European project

Modeling Cyber-Physical Production Systems with SystemC-AMS

The heterogeneous nature of SystemC-AMS makes it a perfect candidate solution to support Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPSs), i.e., systems that are characterized by a tight interaction of the cyber part with the surrounding physical world and with manufacturing production processes. Nonetheless, the support for the modeling of physical and mechanical dynamics typical of production machinery goes far beyond the initial application scenario of SystemC-AMS, thus limiting its effectiveness and adoption in the production and manufacturing context. This paper starts with an analysis of the current adoption of SystemC-AMS to highlight the open points that still limit its effectiveness, with the goal of pinpointing current issues and to propose solutions that could improve its effectiveness, and make SystemC-AMS an essential resource also in the new Industry 4.0 scenario

On mixed abstraction, languages and simulation approach to refinement with SystemC AMS

Executable specifications and simulations arecornerstone to system design flows. Complex mixed signalembedded systems can be specified with SystemC AMSwhich supports abstraction and extensible models of computation. The language contains semantics for moduleconnections and synchronization required in analog anddigital interaction. Through the synchronization layer, user defined models of computation, solvers and simulators can be unified in the SystemC AMS simulator for achieving low level abstraction and model refinement. These improvements assist in amplifying model aspects and their contribution to the overall system behavior. This work presents cosimulating refined models with timed data flow paradigm of SystemC AMS. The methodology uses Cbased interaction between simulators. An RTL model ofdata encryption standard is demonstrated as an example.The methodology is flexible and can be applied in earlydesign decision trade off, architecture experimentation and particularly for model refinement and critical behavior analysis

Virtual prototyping of pressure driven microfluidic systems with SystemC-AMS extensions

The design of "Lab on a Chip" microfluidic devices is, typically, preceded by a long and costly period of prototyping stages in which the system is gradually refined by an iterative process, involving the manufacturing of a physical prototype and the making of a lot of laboratory experiments. In this scenario, a virtual prototyping framework which allows the emulation of the behavior of the complete system is greatly welcome. This paper presents such a framework and details a virtual prototyping methodology able to soundly handle microfluidic behavior based on SystemC-AMS extensions. The use of these extensions will permit the communication of the developed microfluidic models with external digital or mixed signal devices. This allows the emulation of the whole Lab on a Chip system as it usually includes a digital control and a mixed-signal reading environment. Moreover, as SystemC-AMS is also being extended to cover other physical domains within the CATRENE CA701 project, interactions with these domains will be possible, for example, with electromechanical or optical parts, should they be part of the system. The presented extensions that can manage the modeling of a micro-fluidic system are detailed. Two approaches have been selected: to model the fluid analytically based on the Poiseuille flow theory and to model the fluid numerically following the SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) approach. Both modeling techniques are, by now, encapsulated under the TDF (Timed Data Flow) MoC (Model of Computation) of SystemC-AMS.This work has been supported by CATRENE CA701H-INCEPTION Projec

IP-XACT for Smart Systems Design: Extensions for the Integration of Functional and Extra-Functional Models

Smart systems are miniaturized devices integrating computation, communication, sensing and actuation. As such, their design can not focus solely on functional behavior, but it must rather take into account different extra-functional concerns, such as power consumption or reliability. Any smart system can thus be modeled through a number of views, each focusing on a specific concern. Such views may exchange information, and they must thus be simulated simultaneously to reproduce mutual influence of the corresponding concerns. This paper shows how the IP-XACT standard, with some necessary extensions, can effectively support this simultaneous simulation. The extended IP-XACT descriptions allow to model extra-functional properties with a homogeneous format, defined by analysing requirements and characteristic of three main concerns, i.e., power, temperature and reliability. The IP-XACT descriptions are then used to automatically generate a skeleton of the simulation infrastructure in SystemC. The skeleton can be easily populated with models available in the literature, thus reaching simultaneous simulation of multiple concerns

SystemC-AMS thermal modeling for the co-simulation of functional and extra-functional properties

Temperature is a critical property of smart systems, due to its impact on reliability and to its inter-dependence with power consumption. Unfortunately, the current design flows evaluate thermal evolution ex-post, on offline power traces. This does not allow to consider temperature as a dimension in the design loop, and it misses all the complex inter-dependencies with design choices and power evolution. In this paper, by adopting the functional language SystemC-AMS, we propose a method to enable thermal/power/functional co-simulation. The system thermal model is built by using state-of-the-art circuit equivalent models, by exploiting the support for electrical linear networks intrinsic of SystemC-AMS. The experimental results will show that the choice of SystemC-AMS is a winning strategy for building a simultaneous simulation of multiple functional and extra-functional properties of a system. The generated code exposes an accuracy comparable to that of the reference thermal simulator HotSpot. Additionally, the initial overhead due to the general purpose nature of SystemC-AMS is compensated by surprisingly high performance of transient simulation, with speedups as high as two orders of magnitude

DesyreML: a SysML profile for heterogeneous embedded systems

International audienceWe propose a novel language for the formal description of heterogeneous embedded systems (DesyreML). As the main contribution, the language is formally described in terms of semantics and concrete syntax based on the SysML language. We define the concept of thick connector to allow for heterogeneous components communication and computation for multiple semantic domains (synchronous reactive, continuous time, discrete time, discrete-event). As technological application, a verification flow based on model-transformation techniques is described showing the use of an enriched version of the SystemC-AMS simulation kernel that is capable of simulating heterogeneous systems containing combinatorial loops. Finally, the language and the analysis flow are applied to a cruise control case study

SystemC-AMS Simulation of Energy Management of Electric Vehicles

Electric vehicles (EV) are rapidly invading the market, since they are clean, quiet and energy efficient. However, there are many factors that discourage EVs for current and potential customers. Among them, driving range is one of the most critical issues: running out of battery charge while driving results in serious inconvenience even comparable to vehicle breakdown, as an effect of long fuel recharging times and lack of charging facilities. As a result, the dimensioning of the energy subsystem of an EV is a crucial activity. The choice of the power components and of the adopted policies should thus be validated at design time through simulations, that estimate the vehicle driving range under reference driving profiles. It is thus necessary to build a simulation framework that takes into account an EV power consumption model, dependent on the characteristics of the vehicle and of the driving route, plus accurate models for all power components, including batteries and green power sources. The goal of this paper is to achieve early EV simulation, so that the designer can estimate at design time the driving range of the vehicle, validate the adopted components and policies and evaluate alternative configurations