ActivaSC: A highly efficient and non-intrusive extension for activity-based analysis of SystemC models

Today´s highly integrated system-on-chips (SoC) demand innovative architectural modeling means to cope with their energy constraints. In this context, SystemC has become a well-established simulation tool for transaction level modeling (TLM) in the integrated electronics industry but it lacks the support for power modeling. This paper introduces ActivaSC, a flexible, fast, transparent and non-intrusive extension to the SystemC class library which allows capturing the activity information of a digital system being modeled. This information can then be post-processed to estimate power consumption. ActivaSC avoids time consuming design iterations as designers can assess architectural design trade-offs based on system activity early in the design flow. ActivaSC does not require any code alterations nor a specific API, so that it can be used with any modeling style. Finally, several benchmark tests illustrate the superior efficiency of ActivaSC. A speed-up of up to 75% in terms of elaboration overhead and 20% in terms of simulation overhead is realized with respect to prior art.