A flexible virtual platform for computational and communication architecture exploration of DMT VDSL modems

In this paper a high-level SoC architecture exploration of DMT (Discrete Multitone) VDSL transceivers (Very high speed Digital Subscriber Line) is presented. A flexible and complete virtual platform was developed for the purpose, exploiting the paradigm of "orthogonalization of concerns" (functionality independent from architecture) in the framework of Cadence VCC system level design tool. An accurate processor model, obtained through the back-annotation of profiling results on a target DSP core, allowed the exploration of different HW/SW partitioning and the study of the computational units required. A transaction-accurate VCC bus model was developed for the investigation of the on-chip bus architecture and its relevant parameters dimensioning.