Book provides help for SystemC users
By Gabe Moretti -- EDN, January 9, 2003
J Bhasker's new book, A SystemC Primer, introduces first-time users to the fundamentals of SystemC. Bhasker, who has written primers for both VHDL and Verilog, as well as other well-received tutorial books on HDLs, does a good job of presenting the syntax and semantics of RTL but dedicates only two chapters to behavioral modeling using SystemC. You'll find many coding examples in every chapter, which provide templates that you can adapt to the needs of your design. They are of great help in quickly understanding the language, although the book (Star Galaxy Publishing, June 2002) assumes a knowledge of C; a working knowledge of C++ would also help, because the book doesn't cover these languages. The $69.95, 250-pg paperback has a set of exercises at the end of each chapter.
Stan Krolikoski, chairman of the Open SystemC Initiative, wrote a foreword for the book in which he tries to justify the introduction of SystemC as a modeling language for electronic designers, but the arguments are flimsy. At one point he states, "Unfortunately, so-called 'behavioral VHDL' proved fairly limited in its expressive power, a limitation avoided in SystemC due to its basis in the quite general C++." Krolikoski, a significant contributor to the design of VHDL, conveniently forgets that VHDL has its basis in Ada, a more robust and general programming language than C++.
In his preface to the book, Bhasker states that "you have to know the basic of C++ programming language" to use SystemC. However, C and C++, although sharing some syntax and semantics, differ greatly in complexity; most software-development organizations consider them as two distinct languages. Throughout the book (ISBN 0965039188), Bhasker uses C to represent both C and C++, an unfortunate simplification. The introduction underscores the fact that SystemC's developers created it to help engineers model designs at the behavioral level. Yet, with the exception of two chapters, Bhasker devotes the book to RTL modeling, a need that both Verilog and VHDL have for many years satisfactorily met. Despite these weak points, if you use SystemC, get the book and keep it on your desk. It will certainly help you through your first few designs.
Star Galaxy Publishing, www.galaxypublishing.com.
