SAN JOSE, Calif. – December 9, 2009 – The Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI), an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and advancing SystemCTM as an industry-standard language for electronic system-level (ESL) design, celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year, a decade marked by a series of major milestones for the group, including official IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) approval of the SystemC language as IEEE Std. 1666-2005TM, “Standard for SystemC,” in December 2005, and the release of the OSCI transaction-level modeling standard, TLM-2.0, in June 2008, promoting the sharing and exchange of high-level models. Industry quotes commemorating the decade of leadership can be found at www.systemc.org.
Introduced at the 1999 Embedded Systems Conference and “setting the stage for what could be a new era in electronics design,” according to EE Times, a group of 35 EDA companies formed a coalition to create an “open-source C++ ‘modeling platform’ to allow hardware, software and systems design in C or C++.”
A longtime analyst and leading provider of marketing intelligence to the global electronic design automation industry, Gary Smith, president and founder of Gary Smith EDA, indicated “SystemC will be the ESL design language of the future,” when OSCI was first announced. Ten years later, he provides this perspective: “OSCI has been extremely successful building worldwide awareness and acceptance of SystemC, exemplified by its expansive user groups. At the same time, it continues to play an important role in creating the standards needed to drive ESL to the next level along with the consensus so necessary to make them a success. The people of OSCI who generously give of their time and expertise to make their success possible have my most sincere congratulations for achieving a decade of outstanding leadership.”
Since the release of IEEE Std. 1666-2005, tens of thousands of users worldwide have downloaded the standard at a rate of more than 10,000 annually. And with over 60,000 registered users on its website, OSCI has built upon this strong SystemC foundation to achieve numerous milestones throughout its 10-year history.
“The IEEE-SA was honored to collaborate with OSCI on the development of IEEE 1666,” said Chuck Adams, president IEEE Standards Association.
“OSCI’s working groups’ outstanding technical contribution and cooperation with the IEEE 1666TM Working Group led to a clearly defined standard for system-level design. We look forward to working with OSCI on the revision of IEEE 1666, which is anticipated to initiate in 2010.”
OSCI’s technical contributions are fueled by the diligent efforts of its working groups that develop and enable technology innovation, specifications, and standards to promote and advance the SystemC ecosystem. Notable among their achievements:
- Analog/Mixed-signal (AMS): the AMS draft 1 standard was released in December 2008. The standard extends SystemC to include analog/mixed-signal features in the first step towards bringing AMS to the system-level.
- Configuration, Control and Inspection (CCI): this newly formed working group will define standards for the way models interoperate with tools. Its initial focus is on model configuration parameters.
- Language: this group drove the IEEE standardization effort and is responsible for the definition and development of the SystemC core language. Work within the group continues, fortifying the SystemC foundation on which all other libraries and functionality can be built.
- Synthesis: the synthesis subset draft 1.3 is open to the public for review. Supported language constructs are now established. The draft includes a discussion on the concepts of the synthesizable subset in the context of the abstraction levels defined for TLM.
- Transaction-level Modeling (TLM): ratified in June 2008, the TLM-2.0 standard enables model interoperability and reuse and provides an essential framework for architecture analysis, software development, and hardware verification. There have been more 16,000 downloads of the standard.
- Verification: SystemC Verification Library (SCV), Release 1.0p2 lets users construct high-level testbenches using SystemC. It also provides the ability to test RTL implementation against golden reference models written in SystemC, and specifies interfaces to HDL simulators.
“Congratulations to the members of OSCI,” said OSCI Chairman, Eric Lish. “It is a vibrant organization with very engaged and diligent working groups around the world that are constantly breaking new ground, and a 10-year legacy of showing leadership by promoting a vital set of open standards created to advance the necessary goal of true system-level design.”
Worldwide support for OSCI and SystemC is evidenced by numerous quotes from industry luminaries now posted on systemc.org, all unanimous in their praise for the group’s leadership and commitment to the advancement of ESL design and the standards that support it.
With thriving user groups in Japan, Europe, North America, Taiwan, and Latin America, and the full support of major companies and standards organizations worldwide, use of SystemC has become a mainstream part of ESL design and high-level model exchange. Companies around the world are using SystemC in a wide range of projects in numerous application areas including consumer electronics, wireless and automotive.
About SystemC and OSCI
The Open SystemCTM Initiative (OSCI) is an independent, not-for-profit association composed of a broad range of organizations dedicated to supporting and advancing SystemC as an open industry standard for system-level modeling, design and verification. SystemC is a language built in C++ that spans from concept to implementation in hardware and software. For further information about SystemC and OSCI visit www.systemc.org.
