Joseph Buck, Synopsys, Inc., Advanced Technology Group
jbuck@synopsys.com
Cocentric (TM) System Studio (aka El Greco [1]) is a platform for rapid system-level functional verification, supporting a variety of models of computation (static and dynamic dataflow, hierarchical finite state machines, and synchronous-reactive modeling, with links to discrete-event simulators such as for hardware description languages). The heterogenous modeling style is heavily influenced by Ptolemy. Because high-speed simulation is a key requirement, we do as much static scheduling and compile-time optimization as possible for both dataflow and control. For dataflow, we extend techniques developed in the Ptolemy group [2] to work with mixed cyclostatic and dynamic dataflow, even when some data rates are symbols rather than constants. For control, we use Esterel-based approaches. Transparent modeling (meaning that the tool "understands" the semantics of the models) allows optimization across model boundaries; we can also do some optimizations across domain boundaries to fold "control" into "dataflow". The talk will provide a survey of the techniques used.
[1] J. T. Buck and R. Vaidyanathan, "Heterogeneous Modeling and Simulation of Embedded Systems in El Greco", Proc. CODES 2000, San Diego, CA, May 2000.
[2] S. S. Bhattacharyya, P. K. Murthy, and E. A. Lee, "Software Synthesis from Dataflow Graphs", Kluwer Academic Press, 1996.