Setting Up the ForSyDe-SystemC Modeling Environment

This page provides information on how to set up the ForSyDe-SystemC modeling library and simulate a model using it.

Prerequisites

In order to model systems using ForSyDe-SystemC one would need

  • a C++ compiler with proper support for newly added C++17 features,
  • an installation of the SystemC system modeling library,
  • an installation of the Boost uBLAS library,
  • a copy of the (header only) ForSyDe-SystemC library on your system,
  • a text editor or an IDE of your choice for developing C++ programs.

The C++ Compiler

Depending on the platform of your choice, you might have different choices for the compiler. ForSyDe-SystemC is mainly developed in Linux using gcc (but also tested with clang). Note that if you decide to use gcc, you will need a version newer or equal to gcc7 and use the -std=c++17 compiler flag.

The SystemC Modeling Library

The reference implementation of the SystemC library can be obtained from the accellera systems initiative web page. The installation instructions are included in the package.

The Boost Library

Boost is a collection of peer-reviewed portable C++ libraries which can be obtained from the Boost C++ libraries home page. At the moment, ForSyDe-SystemC mainly uses the uBLAS library of Boost for matrix operations.

The ForSyDe-SystemC Library

ForSyDe-SystemC is a C++ header-only library which means it does not need to be compiled during installation and linked againsted during model development. The reason for that is the heavy use of template classes and functions which provide type-safe polymorphism. After obtaining the library, either via the download section or the development code repository, it needs to be copied to a desired place on your system and referred to during compilation. Although there will be regular releases of the library available in the downloads section, we currently recommend using the HEAD version obtained directly from the git code repository. this is because ForSyDe-SystemC is actively developed and debugged and we try to keep the online tutorials synced with the latest version of the library.

A Text Editor/IDE

Any C++ code editor can used developing ForSyDe-SystemC models. However, we recommend choosing one which also supports recent C++17 additions to the language.

Example Setups

Ubuntu Linux

In case you have a recent version of Ubuntu installed (20.04 at the moment of writing this tutorial),

  • install the required tools needed for development using gcc by issuing the following command in a terminal

    sudo apt-get install build-essential

  • once you have downloaded the SystemC library, you can extract, build, and install it by

    tar xvzf systemc-<version>.tgz
cd systemc-<version>
mkdir objdir
cd objdir
../configure CXXFLAGS="-DSC_CPLUSPLUS=201703L -std=c++17"
make
make install

Note that you can use the --prefix=/your/install/dir/ switch in the configuration stage to install the libraries to a different location than the default system libraries path. In case you do this, do not forget to add the library paths during compilation and set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable during the execution of your models.

  • you can install the Boost libraries by

    sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev

  • if you have not installed git, you can install it first

    sudo apt-get install git

    and then use it to check out the latest version of the ForSyDe-SystemC library from the repositories to the current folder by

    git clone https://github.com/forsyde/ForSyDe-SystemC

  • either use the editors which are provided by Ubuntu by default such as nano, vm, emacs, gedit, or install an editor of your choice like geany, eclipse, etc.

You should now be able to build your system models against the SystemC and ForSyDe-SystemC libraries and execute them.