Aspect-oriented RTL HW design using SystemC

•We describe an AOP-based method for designing synthesizable hardware components using SystemC.•Our mechanisms are based only on standard C++ features available on the SystemC synthesizable subset.•No external aspect weaving tool is required.•In a PABX case study, we have increased the code reuse by about 33% with a circuit area overhead of only 2%.

With the increasing complexity of digital hardware designs, hardware description languages are being pushed to higher levels of abstraction, thus allowing for the use of design artifacts which were previously exclusive to the software domain. In this paper we aim to contribute to this scenario by proposing artifacts and guidelines for hardware design at the register transfer level using object-oriented and aspect-oriented programming concepts. Our methodology is based on features provided by SystemC, a C++-based hardware description language, and leverages on its synthesizable subset in order to produce designs suitable for circuit synthesis. Our experimental results show that the introduction of aspect-oriented design artifacts results in an increased level of flexibility and reusability while yielding a circuit area overhead of only 2.5%2.5% when compared to non-aspect-oriented designs.