Message from John

Greetings ITC Techies,

 

I would like to send out a quick e-mail just to confirm

how many people will be attending the face-to-face next

week on Feb. 9th as planned.

 

Please let me know if you plan to attend either in person

or by teleconference.

 

Secondly, I've been thinking about SCE-MI 2/TLM compatibility.

 

Since we're somewhat behind schedule from our original

2005 goal to have the SCE-MI 2 standard released I'd like

to take a slightly more aggressive posture and suggest

that we bundle in some capability for TLM compliance

in order to keep SCE-MI 2 fresh and to keep the interest

alive.

 

As defined now the pipes are not TLM compliant. Yet they

have a fairly strong use model for streaming, variable-length

messaging, and data shaping that I don't think we should change

as this feature will serve some important application use

models that need streaming.

 

However, I'm thinking that in addition to the streaming

and variable length message use model we should strongly

consider also supporting a fully TLM compliant use model.

 

I realize that this is a new requirement but I'm concerned

about the usefulness of the SCE-MI 2 standard if it

will not properly support TLM applications.

 

Toward that end, I'd like to put forth a proposal

that provides a TLM compliant use model in addition

to the streaming use model.

 

This new capability is similar to the pipes capability in

that in can be easily built over DPI compliant simulators.

 

But it has some differences in semantics that have to do with

supporting non-blocking (but still deterministic) access

operations in addition to blocking ones, and supporting user

specified buffer depth for batching. More of a fifo model

(in the sense of tlm_fifos) than a streaming model.

 

As I said, I don't want to change the streaming use model

we've set in place. That is important in and of itself.

But I think SCE-MI 2 will be incomplete and will have

"missed the boat" if we do not include TLM support.

 

I can have a proposal ready to put on the table next

week for the face-to-face if others are agreeable.

 

-- johnS