In this paper we present a generic interconnect fabric for transaction level modelling tackeling three major aspects. First, a review of the bus and IO structures that we have analysed, which are common in todays system on chip environments, and require to be modelled at a transaction level. Second our findings in terms of the data structures and interface API's that are required in order to model those (and we believe other) busses and IO structures. Third the surrounding infrastructure that we believe can, and should be in place to support the modelling of those busses and IO structures. We will present the infrastructure that we have built, and indicate where our future work will hea.

Our concept of a virtual transaction layer (VTL) architecture allows to directly map transaction-level communication channels onto a synthesizable multiprocessor SoC implementation. The VTL is above the physical MPSoC communication architecture, acting as a hardware abstraction layer for both HW and SW components. TLM channels are represented by virtual channels which efficiently route transactions between SW and HW entities through the on-chip communication network with respect to quality-of-service and realtime requirements. The goal is to methodically simplify MPSoC design by systematic HW/SW interface abstraction, thus enabling early SW verification, rapid prototyping and fast exploration of critical design issues. With TRAIN, we present our implementation of such a VTL architecture for Virtex-II Pro and PowerPC and illustrate its efficiency by experimentation

The paper gives an overview of a transaction level modeling (TLM) design flow for straightforward embedded system design with SystemC. The goal is to develop systematically both the HW and SW application-specific components of an embedded system using the TLM approach, thus allowing for fast communication architecture exploration, rapid prototyping and early embedded SW development. To this end, we specify a lightweight transaction-based communication protocol, SHIP (SystemC high-level interface protocol), and present a methodology for automatic mapping of the communication part of a system to a given architecture, including HW/SW interfaces.