In 1999 Synopsys created OSCI, an organization devoted to the support of its brand new SystemC language devoted to enabling ESL design. Since that time OSCI has grown to a significant independent consortium whose principal mission has continued to be the support of SystemC users, while also dedicating efforts toward standardization of methods and tools directly related to SystemC.

TLM, which stands for Transaction Level Modeling not only became an OSCI standard, but in my opinion, could be extended to become an IEEE standard covering other system level languages beside SystemC, a subset of C++.

As you probably know, OSCI and Accellera “discovered” that their mission was similar and that they had a significant portion of overlapping membership. The most logical consequence of the “discovery” was the exploration of a merger. This was started and publicly announced on June 22 of this year. The goal is to finish the work by the end of the year and be fully functional as a new entity by February 2012, in time for DVCon, Accellera primary exhibition and technical conference.

But for most parents, letting go of a child is hard, no matter how grown-up he or she is. And so, Synopsys has launched a new initiative TLMCentral, creating a portal that plans to group in one place IP offerings, both commercial and open source, of IP that uses or supports TLM. When I asked if they would be willing to allow the new organization resulting from the Accellera/OSCI merger, whose super secret name cannot yet be revealed, to manage the site, Johannes Stahl, the Synopsys person responsible for TLMCentral, was logically “open to explore the possibility”.

At this point what can TLMCentral offer? To SystemC users a convenient place to find IP related to TLM use. To Synopsys a list of emails, a way to build relationships with IP providers and, above all, an additional marketing tool in the mission to own the Virtual Prototyping market. The latter aspect is by far the most important, since by itself, the new portal does not provide any income, nor does it have a long proprietary life.

In fact I expect that it will become obvious to Synopsys, unless they plan not to be a member of the new Accellera something something (I told you it is a secret) consortium, that giving the responsibility of maintaining the site to the consortium is the right thing to do.

After all the best way of promoting virtual prototyping is to have a third party do it for you. As I look at the site, its contents are quite impressive and certainly offer ease of use. There are a few potholes that Synopsys may not have quite considered. The largest one of all is how the new site can work and harmonize with the SystemC Users Group, which obviously will be managed by the new Accellera Consortium. It goes without saying that the SystemC Users Group must talk about TLM in their daily work, and it is also obvious that TLM related IP will be influenced by what goes on in the maintenance and extension of the SystemC IEEE standard (IEEE P1666).

One just cannot escape the fact the EDA is no longer an industry of point tools. Everything is connected. We are no longer building ASIC devices, we are building Systems, and that requires a well integrated inventory of tools, methods, and standards.