SystemC: From the Ground Up, Second Edition Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This is a good book on SystemC, but it is not a good book for beginners. The book is overly complicated and provides levels of detail in its examples that are unnecessary to make the point or teach the subject.
For example, when discussing ports the book says the following:
DEFINITION: A SystemC interface is an abstract class that inherits from sc_interface and provides only pure virtual declarations of methods referenced by SystemC channels and ports. No implements or data are provided in a SystemC interface.
DEFINITION: A SystemC channel is a class that implements one or more SystemC interface classes and inherits from either sc_channel or sc_prim_channel. A channel implements all the methods of the inherited interface classes.
DEFINITION: A SystemC port is a class templated with and inheriting from a SystemC interface. Ports allow access of channels across module boundaries.
Huh?
This line of teaching led me into the bowels of SystemC and was unnecessary as a start. One can just say, "A port allows communication between blocks. Let's look at sc_in and sc_out to start".
I needed to get another book to recover from this instruction.
The examples in the book are generally OK and there is a website that has executable versions. Unfortunately, there needed to be more careful editing in the examples. The HelloWorld example has an obvious syntax error (an undeclared module is instantiated) and would never have run if it had been compiled.
I could not find the video mixer example that they used to teach ports on the web, and thus couldn't make progress.
Overall, this is a good book if you know SystemC and are interested in the details of how it is implemented. I would use it to learn the language, and it cannot act as a language reference guide.

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SystemC provides a robust set of extensions to the C++ language that enables rapid development of complex models of hardware and software systems. The authors focus on practical use of the language for modeling real systems, showing:A step-by-step build-up of syntaxCode examples for each conceptOver 8000 lines of downloadable code examplesUpdates to reflect the SystemC standard, IEEE 1666Why features are as they areMany resource referencesHow SystemC fits into an ESL methodologyThis new edition of an industry best seller is updated to reflect the standardization of SystemC as IEEE 1666 and other improvements that reflect feedback from readers of the first edition. The wide ranging feedback also include suggestions from editors of the Japanese and Korean language translations, professors and students, and computer engineers from a broad industrial and geographical spectrum, all who have successfully used the first edition. New chapters have been added on the SystemC Verification Library and the Transaction Level Modeling, and proposed changes to the current SystemC standard. David Black and Jack Donovan, well known consultants in the EDA industry, have teamed with Bill Bunton and Anna Keist, experienced SystemC modeling engineers, to write the second edition of this highly popular classic. As a team the authors bring over 100 years of ASIC and system design experience together to make a very readable introduction to SystemC.

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