Transaction Level Modeling in System Level Design

Recently, the transaction-level modeling is widely referred to in system level design literature. However, the transactionlevel models(TLMs) are not well defined and the usages of TLM in the existing design approaches, namely system synthesis, platform-based design, and component-based design, are not systematically developed. In order to efficiently use TLMs in above design approaches, this report defines four transaction level abstraction models. The defined TLMs slice the entire design process into several small design tasks. Each task targets at a specific design objective and the result of a task can be validated by simulating the corresponding TLM. Designers can extract the characteristics of the design from lowerlevel TLMs and annotate them to the higher-level TLMs, such that designers can accurately make design decision at early stages. Using defined TLMs as standard models, designers can reuse/exchange the pre-defined TLMs and implement the cross-approach design.