A new specification for Open Core Protocol (OCP) users will present a seamless flow for complex system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. Publication of the spec comes via the OCP International Partnership (OCP-IP), an association that provides a common, open-source standard for intellectual-property core interfaces.
Association members Nokia, Texas Instruments, Sonics, and Synopsys are publishing the application-programming-interface (API) specification, along with example models, so OCP users can utilize best-in-class SystemC design and verification methodologies. The end result is a seamless design flow from high-level system specification to OCP-based SoC implementation.
"Users of OCP, such as Texas Instruments and Nokia, now have clear guidelines on how to design OCP-based systems using SystemC," says Joachim Kunkel, vice president of marketing for Intellectual Property and System Level Design at Synopsys. "This API and the SystemC examples give these companies the methodology to manage design complexity of OCP-based SoCs at higher levels of design abstraction."
The methodology covers generic modeling of communication with hardware and software components down to cycle-accurate OCP modeling at the transaction level. OCP-IP members are jointly writing the OCP SystemC API specification, which comes with SystemC examples, comparable to the widely accepted "simple_bus" model Synopsys contributed to the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) earlier this year.
A white paper is available from the OCP-IP at www.OCPIP.org. The API specification and SystemC example models will be available for download from the contributions area on the OSCI Web site.