Verification of SystemC transaction level models using an aspect-oriented and generic approach

Transaction level modeling (TLM) has become an accepted and well supported paradigm that is intended to create hardware designs at high abstraction levels. In this paper, we present a methodology that targets the verification of SystemC transaction level models using runtime monitoring. Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) techniques are exploited to handle the high-level TLM features in an automated and generic way. No modifications are needed in the design's SystemC code. In addition, a wide range of functional and performance assertions is addressed. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach on a realistic system-on-chip platform based on TLM-2.0 standard compliant models and including Open Core Protocol (OCP) interfaces.