Formal heterogeneous system modeling with SystemC

Electronic System Level (ESL) design of embedded systems proposes raising the abstraction level of the design entry to cope with the increasing complexity of such systems. To exploit the benefits of ESL, design languages should allow specification of models which are a) heterogeneous, to describe different aspects of systems; b) formally defined, for application of analysis and synthesis methods; c) executable, to enable early detection of specification; and d) parallel, to exploit the multi- and many-core platforms for simulation and implementation. We present a modeling library on top of SystemC, targeting heterogeneous embedded system design, based on four models of computation. The library has a formal basis where all elements are well defined and lead in construction of analyzable models. The semantics of communication and computation are implemented by the library, which allows the designer to focus on specifying the pure functional aspects. A key advantage is that the formalism is used to export the structure and behavior of the models via introspection as an abstract representation for further analysis and synthesis.