Towards the Development of a Set of Transaction Level Models A Feature-Oriented Approach

Abstract

AbstractAbstract According to the OSCI TLM-2.0 LRM, Transaction Level Model (TLM) has many coding styles, e.g. untimed (UT), loosely-timed (LT) and approximately-timed (AT). Different coding styles serve for different use cases in the development of a SoC and correspond to different TLMs. It is often the case that in the design of a SoC, a set of TLM is developed. TLMs in the set share common functionalities but differ in their timing, configuration or implementation details. It is obviously not a good way to develop each TLM in the set from scratch since the similarity among the TLMs is not exploited. Nor is it a good way to develop them with Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm, since functionalities are implemented seldom by single classes but instead by a whole set of collaborating classes, and OOP is not good at capturing such collaborations. This paper proposes to deem the set of TLMs created for a SoC project as a TLM Product Line (TPL) and develop the TPL with Feature-Oriented Programming (FOP) paradigm. FOP is a software development paradigm for the development of Software Product Line and it can capture collaborations clearly. Considering that TLMs are in fact concurrent software programs simulating hardware behaviors, feature-oriented development of TPL is feasible. This paper discussed the universality of TPL, the poor support of OOP for TPL development, and the advantages that FOP can bring for TPL development.KeywordsDomain DesignPower EstimationSoftware Product LineFeature ExpressionRegister Transfer LevelThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.