C Level Design, however, says it is not attempting to compete with SystemC or CynLib. Nor is it proposing SystemC++ as yet another standard. Instead, C Level Design argues that the only true industry standard will emerge from work at Open Verilog International (OVI) to create a Semantic Reference Manual (SRM) and called upon Synopsys, CoWare and other SystemC backers to join that initiative.

"We are refusing to fight the class library wars," said David Park, vice president of marketing at C Level Design, based here. "The only sensible thing to support is the standardization efforts of OVI and VSIA [Virtual Socket Interface Alliance]."

Park said C Level has committed to supporting SystemC, and to providing both SystemC and CSim users with "a migration path to the OVI SRM-compliant library." C Level will help out with the OVI SRM effort, and may consider donating SystemC++ through VSIA, Park said.

It's unclear, however, when an OVI SRM-compliant library will exist, and whether the Open SystemC initiative, a broad coalition of vendors supporting SystemC, will endorse it. CynApps, on the other hand, is actively involved with the OVI SRM effort.

C Level's class libraries have, in part, been acquired from Easics NV (Leuven, Belgium), the spin-off from the Interuniversities Microelectronics Center, with which C Level announced a design services partnership in November. Work on System C++ dates back to early 1998, when Easics was the first company to propose a class-library solution to the VSIA. Easics also developed the complementary CSim simulation environment now offered by C Level.

Meanwhile, C Level has reworked its C2VHDL and C2Verilog tools and renamed them System Compiler 3.0. The company describes System Compiler as a comprehensive synthesis tool that can take C or C++ code and produce register-transfer level Verilog or VHDL for subsequent logic synthesis.

The System C++ library makes it possible to support hardware data types and concurrency in C/C++. According to Park, it has constructs lacking in other C++ class libraries for supporting networking and DSP designs. System C++ claims uniqueness with such constructs as "after" statements, delay lines, queues, containers and bandwidth monitors.

Complete environment

Additionally, CSim claims to be a complete simulation environment comprising a number of individual tools, as opposed to a kernel that needs to be supplemented with other tools. System C++ is part of this environment and will not be available for free downloading over the Web, as are SystemC and CynLib.

Although C Level insists it's not competing with Open SystemC, Park claimed that effort is not really an open standards initiative. "The SystemC steering committee is a closed body with Synopsys and CoWare as the only EDA vendors," he said. "It is not open to Mentor, Cadence or any other EDA vendor. That is not really what you could call an industry-standard open library."

Dan Skilken, C Level's president and chief executive officer, said his company had asked to be part of the SystemC steering committee and was turned down. Skilken said that C Level Design had not joined SystemC as a community licensee because the board is closed, with no process for companies to join it, and because there was no guarantee that any SystemC++ technology donated to the community would have been included.

Kevin Kranen, director of strategic programs at Synopsys, said the "invite pool" for the Open SystemC steering group was kept deliberately small to avoid becoming unwieldy, and to achieve a balance among EDA, intellectual-property, embedded-software, systems and semiconductor companies. He acknowledged that there is currently no process for enlarging the 11-member steering group.

He also said Open SystemC has made no decisions concerning the OVI SRM effort. "The SystemC steering group is currently formulating which bodies it will liaise with, and how. Some individual members of the steering group are also involved with the OVI work," he said.

While the SystemC++ name is very similar to System C, Skilken said that he advised Synopsys before it announced the SystemC initiative that C Level Design had a trademark on SystemC++.

CSim's capabilities include a graphical user interface, design browser, waveform display, plotting facilities and co-simulation interfaces for instruction set simulation and Spice simulation. A design wizard called Chase assists engineers in building module interfaces between hierarchical and leaf-functional blocks.

"Using CSim, we created a bit-accurate high-level model of an ADSL modem chip that simulated at 100 times the speed of our VHDL," said Karel Adriaensen, project leader at Alcatel Telecom. "This makes it a powerful verification tool for our software, IC and system certification teams."

Skilken said he was not fazed by the long list of Open SystemC backers, now totaling 55 companies. "Has this class library ever been used for design? That's much more important. SystemC++ has been used for a number of real projects," he said.

Although SystemC is still in its version 0.9 release, Kranen said that "quite a few design groups have already completed projects using components of SystemC."

CSim and System Compiler 3.0 will be available for production shipment in the first quarter. Bundled pricing starts at $100,000 on Unix and Windows NT platforms.