Static analysis of transaction-level models

The introduction of design languages, such as SystemC 2.0, that allow the modeling of digital systems at the transaction level will impose some major changes to the design flows. Since these formalisms allow for a higher level of abstraction in the systems description, new methodological tools will be needed to support all design phases. The goal of this paper is twofold: first we formalize in an abstract way a significant set of features of a Transaction Level Model, according to the SystemC 2.0 formalism. Then, upon this model we define numerical metrics that can provide useful information in the analysis of the system-level specifications. In particular these metrics are useful in the design exploration phase, to define the main characteristics of the hardware and software architectures.