UML for ESL Design - Basic Principles, Tools, and Applications

This paper starts with a brief introduction to the UML 2.0 and application-specific UML customizations via profiles. After a discussion of UML design tools with focus on EDA support, we present a HW/SW co-design approach and demonstrate how HW architectures are described together with application SW in a unique UML based environment. Using a dedicated profile providing support for SystemC in UML, and a SystemC wrapper for the SimIt instruction set simulator of a StrongARM, an executable model of the complete architecture is generated which can be simulated by the SystemC kernel. The physical layer of an 802.11a system is used as an application example