editor's blog
Subscribe Now

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Models

Software is becoming an increasingly important element in SoCs as embedded systems are integrated into single chips. Such a chip must ship with working software, and, if it includes a platform that will run an OS and drivers and software written by the user, then even more testing is needed to prevent nasty surprises or let-downs.

This sort of testing starts at the architectural planning phase and continues down through the exercising of software on the detailed design. Initially, and for short bits of code, it can be done on a virtual platform – a model of the processing platform executing on a host computer. For longer runs of code (even simply booting Linux) that run on the actual design, an emulator is typically needed in order to get things done in a reasonable time.

In a virtual platform, at the architectural level, the models are typically SystemC. In an emulator, they will likely be the actual design (or have components of the actual design). In both cases, communication happens at the transaction level using TLM 2.0 – between models or, in an emulation scenario, between the emulator and the host.

This means that there’s a growing need for models and transactors. While they’re available today, Synopsys and others have decided that they’re too scattered, and that there is a need for a single place to go and look for (or request) models.

So they’ve created TLMCentral, an open portal for models and transactors. While Synopsys is providing the infrastructure, it is claimed to be open to anyone (including Synopsys competitors). Synopsys will participate as a model provider based on their IP business.

They’ve created the site as a general place to go not only for models, but for information and news as well. They have a forum, a blog, and a news feed.

The site is now live at www.tlmcentral.com.

More info on the press release

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Jun 12, 2025
We truly do live in a world that would have been considered to be a far-flung science fiction future only a few short decades ago...

featured paper

Shift Left with Calibre Pattern Matching: Trust in design practices but verify early and frequently

Sponsored by Siemens Digital Industries Software

As integrated circuit (IC) designs become increasingly complex, early-stage verification is crucial to ensure productivity and quality in design processes. The "shift left" verification approach, enabled by Siemens’ Calibre nmPlatform, helps IC design teams to identify and resolve critical issues much earlier in the design cycle.

Click to read more

featured chalk talk

STM32 Security for IoT
Today’s modern embedded systems face a range of security risks that can stem from a variety of different sources including insecure communication protocols, hardware vulnerabilities, and physical tampering. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Thierry Crespo from STMicroelectronics explore the biggest security challenges facing embedded designers today, the benefits of the STM32 Trust platform, and why the STM32Trust TEE Secure Manager is an IoT security game changer.
Aug 20, 2024
39,949 views