SystemC represents a challenge to engineers, because it bridges the divide between the worlds of hardware and software. These are two distinct disciplines, the languages of hardware design such as Verilog and VHDL are very different in philosophy to the languages of software development such as C++ and Java. Yet both are brought together in the world of the System on Chip SoC, where large embedded software systems must run on complex silicon chips often containing multiple processor cores of different architectures.

This application note is aimed at any engineer intending to bridge the gap between hardware and software. It recognizes that the reader will most likely be expert in only one of these. Explanation is provided throughout of both the hardware ideas and software ideas being covered.

The reader is assumed to have basic programming familiarity with C and C++ and the key concepts of object oriented programming: classes and instances of classes. A basic understanding of system level hardware design and the construction of SoC from components linked by buses (or on-chip networks).

Familiarity with SystemC is assumed. The user guide supplied with SystemC provides a good introduction [7].