Stepwise SystemC/TLM-2 models structuring and optimizations

Transaction level modelling (TLM) is among the most promising electronic system level (ESL) methodologies to handle the growing complexity of ESL designs. The last SystemC standard incorporates TLM concepts by adding the TLM-2 library. It places de facto SystemC and TLM-2 library as a standard when writing transaction level (TL) models. Standard establishment is a corner stone to pass to next logical steps that are transaction-level synthesis and electronic design automation. Nevertheless, good practice in writing and simulating systems at transaction level must be adopted to bring up more elaborated semantics of each TL model. We write this paper in this sense. Through guideline example, we expose techniques to write well-structured and modular TL models that help to explore and optimize the system architecture.