From multicore simulation to hardware synthesis using transactions

With the increasing complexity of digital systems that are becoming more and more parallel, a better abstraction to describe such systems has become necessary. This paper shows how, by using the powerful mechanism of transactions as a concurrency model, and by taking advantage of .NET introspection and attribute programming capabilities, we were able to achieve an automatic high-level synthesis flow. Indeed, we kept the same object oriented programming concepts to describe the architecture of high-level models, such as encapsulation and interfacing. However, unlike SystemC, the behaviour is no longer described as processes and events but as transactions. Transactions can be seen as atomic actions interacting through shared variables. Then, we transform such high level translational model to a SystemC behavioral model ready to be synthesized by a behavioral synthesizer.