Behavioral synthesis with SystemC

Having to cope with the continuously increasing complexity of modern digital systems, hardware designers are considering more and more seriously language based methodologies for parts of their designs. Last year the introduction of a new language for hardware descriptions, the SystemC C++ class library, initiated a closer relationship between software and hardware descriptions and development tools. This paper presents a synthesis environment and the corresponding synthesis methodology, based on traditional compiler generation techniques, which incorporate SystemC, VHDL and Verilog to transform existing algorithmic software models into hardware system implementations. Following this approach, reusability of software components is introduced in the hardware world and time-to-market is decreased, as shown by experimental results.