RELEASENOTES

        Release Notes for SystemC 2.2.0 Release Of 14 Mar 2007
        ======================================================

CONTENTS
========

  1) What's new in this release?

  2) Bug fixes and enhancements

  3) New features

  4) Incompatibitilies with previous releases

  5) Fixes to match the IEEE 1666 SystemC Language Reference Manual

  6) Dynamic process support

  7) Experimental features

  8) Known problems

  9) Fixed-point library


1) What's new in this release?
==============================

Compared to the 05 June 2006 release, this release has the following
new items:

  - Bug fixes, see next section.
     

2) Bug fixes and enhancements
=============================

Following is the list of bug fixes and enhancements for this release:

     - CHANGES FOR GCC 4.X

       src/sysc/datatypes/bit/sc_logic.h:

         Prefixed references to the logic tables within sc_logic with the 
         class name.

       src/sysc/kernel/sc_module.h

         The process creation macros now have a prefix of this-> on 
         references to sensitive, sensitive_pos and sensitive_neg. 
         This is required with gcc 4.x when a module is a parent of a class 
         that is no sc_module:
            class B: public sc_module;
            class A: public B;

     - CONCATENATION BUG IN sc_bitref<X> CLASS
       
       src/sysc/datatypes/bit/sc_bit_proxies.h

         Bug fixed in sc_bitref<X>::set_word() and sc_bit_ref<X>::set_cword()
         methods. These methods are called by the bit concatenation code to
         set the bit represented by the reference. However the code in the
         set_word() and set_cword() methods was setting all the bits in the
         word whose index was the bit index of the bit the bit reference
         was representing. The code now sets only the bit specified in
         the bit reference.

     - PART SELECTION BUG

       src/sysc/datatypes/int/sc_nbcommon.inc:

         Fixed case where part selections for an sc_signed number were 
         incorrectly returning a signed value rather than an unsigned one.
         Removed a redundant piece of code that was #if'ed out, and would 
         never be used since a copy of it already existed.

     - CONCATENATION BUG IN sc_signed CLASS
     
       src/sysc/datatypes/int/sc_signed.cpp:

         Bug fixed in concat_get_data for sc_signed values. The individual 
         digits for a negative sc_signed value were not being masked properly, 
         resulting in an incorrect sign propagation during two's complement 
         conversion.

     - AND REDUCTION BUG in sc_unsigned CLASS

       src/sysc/datatypes/int/sc_unsigned.cpp:

         Bug fixed where the code for reduce_and was not taking into account 
         the fact that there is a bonus bit on top of sc_unsigned values that 
         is always 0.

     - BUG INVOLVING ARITHMETIC EXPRESSIONS CONTAINING sc_concatref INSTANCES

       src/sysc/datatypes/misc/sc_concatref.h:

       Changed operators that act on an sc_concatref and a signed value to 
       returned sc_signed results. Previously they were returning sc_unsigned 
       results which is incorrect.

3) New features
===============

Here is an overview of changes in 2.2.0 compared to 2.1.v1:

    - SUPPORT FOR 64-BIT LINUX

        src/sysc/qt/md/iX86_64.h
        src/sysc/qt/md/iX86_64.s
        src/sysc/qt/config
        configure.in

          64-bit native mode for Linux is now a SystemC platform. The
          implementation uses quick threads for thread support. The major
          code change is the use of the sc_digit data type to represent
          values that were previously unsigned long. These occurred in 
          the concatenation code and the internal representations for
          sc_signed, sc_unsigned, bit classes, and some fixed point 
          classes.



4) Incompatibilities with previous releases
===========================================

Here is a list of known incompatibilities between this release and 2.1.v1:

  - Lambda expressions, and the functions and methods associated with
    them, have been removed to comply with the SystemC standard. 
    
      o The deferred() method has been removed from the signal and port
        classes that took bool or sc_logic templates. The deferred()
        method was used to generate lambda expressions and so is 
        obsolete.

      o The watching() function has been removed. The major use of the
        watching() function was to provide reset semantics for 
        SC_CTHREAD instances. This is accomplished in SystemC 2.2.0 by 
        using the reset_signal_is() method of the sc_module class. 

      o The wait_until() function has been removed. Calls to wait_until() 
        can be replaced by a do-while loop. Given a wait_until() call like
            wait_until( valid.deferred() == true );
        replace it with
            do { wait(); } while ( !(valid == true) );
        Note the removal of the deferred() invocation and the reversal
        of the sense of the expression. The general algorithm for 
        converting a wait_until call: wait_until(expr) is:
          o Remove the deferred() method calls in the expression, leaving
            the ports and signals the calls were for.
          o Replace the wait_until text with 
                do { wait(); } while
          o Reverse the sense of the expression:
                do { wait(); } while ( !(expr) );

  - The check for multiple writers of a signal now defaults on rather than
    off. This means that if two separate processes write to a signal an 
    error will be reported. To turn off the check, reverting to the
    behavior of previous releases, one needs set an environment variable:
        setenv SC_SIGNAL_WRITE_CHECK DISABLE
    When set SystemC programs will not perform the write check.
    
  - The signature for the find_event() virutal method in sc_event_finder
    has changed. An additional optional sc_interface pointer has been
    added as an argument. So the signature is now:

    virtual sc_event& find_event( sc_interface* p = 0 ) const;

    The additional argument is used to specify the interface to return
    the sc_event instance for when using multi-interface ports.

  - The function for setting the time unit associated with a trace file
    has changed. It now has the signature:
       void set_time_unit( double v, sc_time_unit tu )
    rather than
       void set_time_unit( int exponent10_seconds )

    To map an old-style call into a new one use the following table:

       Old New v New tu | Old New v New tu | Old New v New tu
       --- ----- ------ | --- ----- ------ | --- ----- ------
       -15    1.0 SC_FS |  -9   1.0 SC_NS  |  -3   1.0 SC_MS
       -14   10.0 SC_FS |  -8  10.0 SC_NS  |  -2  10.0 SC_MS
       -13  100.0 SC_FS |  -7 100.0 SC_NS  |  -1 100.0 SC_MS
       -12    1.0 SC_PS |  -6   1.0 SC_US  |   0   1.0 SC_SEC
       -11   10.0 SC_PS |  -5  10.0 SC_US  |   1  10.0 SC_SEC
       -10  100.0 SC_PS |  -4 100.0 SC_US  |   2 100.0 SC_SEC

  - Three methods were removed from sc_simcontext that were previously
     used to register processes:
       o register_cthread_process()
       o register_method_process()
       o register_thread_process()
     These are no longer called, since you cannot create a process 
     without calling one of the three new create_XXXX_process methods.

  - The << operators for process handles have been removed from the
    sc_sensitive, sc_sensitive_neg, and sc_sensitive_pos classes:
      o operator << ( sc_cthread_handle )
      o operator << ( sc_module_handle )
      o operator << ( sc_thread_handle )
    These are no longer needed since one can use an sc_process_handle
    instance to set the process.

5) Fixes to match with the IEEE 1666 SystemC Language Reference Manual
======================================================================

- The OSCI SystemC 2.2.0 open-source proof-of-concept implementation is 
  now compliant with the IEEE 1666 SystemC Language Reference Manual(LRM)
  in a number of areas that SystemC 2.1.v1 was not. 
  
  The IEEE 1666 LRM is the official standard for the SystemC language. 
  It is a very useful reference document for all SystemC users, and it 
  can be freely downloaded it at the URL below:
  
      http://standards.ieee.org/getieee/1666/index.html
  
- The changes from 2.1.v1 
  are:

- 2.2.0 does implement the pure virtual function 
  set_time_unit of class sc_trace_file that replaces the member 
  functions sc_set_vcd_time_unit and sc_set_wif_time_unit of 
  classes vcd_trace_file and wif_trace_file, respectively. 

- 2.2.0 does implement the valid, name, proc_kind, 
  get_child_object, get_parent_object, dynamic, 
  terminated_event, operator==, operator!= members of the 
  class sc_process_handle. 

- 2.2.0 has removed member function wait() from class 
  sc_process_handle. 

- 2.2.0 has implemented the sc_get_current_process_handle 
  function. 

- 2.2.0 has implemented the kind member function of class 
  sc_event_queue and has changed the default constructor name 
  seed to "event_queue". 

- 2.2.0 has implemented the get_parent_object and 
  get_child_objects member functions of class sc_object 

- 2.2.0 has implemented the the behavior of sc_object 
  constructors and sc_gen_unique_name such that every sc_object 
  is registered in the object hierarchy and has a unique 
  hierarchical name of the form seed_N. 

- 2.2.0 has implemented the sc_find_object function and 
  sc_get_top_level_objects. 

- 2.2.0 has removed the constructors of class sc_export that 
  bind the export at the time of construction. 

- 2.2.0 has made constructor sc_export( const char* ) 
  explicit. 

- In 2.2.0 a call to function sc_spawn during what would have 
  been the final update phase causes the spawned process to run 
  in the next evaluation phase, potentially causing simulation to 
  continue. 

- 2.2.0 has changed the type of the first parameter to 
  functions sc_stop_here and sc_interrupt_here from int to const 
  char*. 

- 2.2.0 has removed the initialize and release member 
  functions of class sc_report_handler. 

- Calling sc_start() with a zero time value, sc_start(SC_ZERO_TIME) will
  result in the execution of a single delta cycle. Previously, the call
  would have executed one or more delta cycles, until there was no more
  pending activity at the current simulation time. To allow users to 
  get the old behavior a new function, sc_pending_activity_at_current_time() 
  has been added. It returns a value of true if there is still activity
  possible before simulation time is advanced, and false it not. So to
  get the previous behavior of sc_start(SC_ZERO_TIME) one needs the 
  following loop:
     do { 
         sc_start(SC_ZERO_TIME); 
     } while ( sc_pending_activity_at_current_time(); }

6) Dynamic Process Support
==========================

SystemC 2.2.0 contains support for dynamic processes, allowing users 
to spawn processes during the execution of a SystemC model. To enable
dynamic process support one must define the following symbol before
including systemc.h:

    #define SC_INCLUDE_DYNAMIC_PROCESSES

An example of dynamic process use is contained in the directory
examples/2.1/sysc/forkjoin.

7) Experimental features
========================

In this section the experimental features of this release are listed.

  - a new class scx_barrier has been added to provide barrier 
    synchronization for dynamic processes. The header defining
    it and an example of its use appear in the directory
    examples/sysc/2.1/scx_barrier.

  - specialized versions of signals and ports for SystemC integer
    datatypes, e.g., sc_int<W>, sc_biguint<W>, has been added for
    experimental use. The headers and source defining this support,
    and an example of its use appear in the examples directory under
    examples/sysc/2.1/specialized_signals.

  - a new class scx_mutex_w_policy has been added to provide mutex 
    support for random arbitration policies when more than one
    process is contending to use a mutex. The header defining this
    support, and an example, in the examples directory under
    examples/sysc/2.1/scx_mutex_w_policy.

8) Deprecated features
======================

In this section the deprecated features of this release compared with 
2.1.v1 are listed.

  - Lambda expressions and watching() and wait_until() have been removed.
    See section 4 above for details.

  - There are now warning messages for the many of the deprecated features 
    in Annex C of the IEEE 1666 SystemC Language Reference Manual (see
    docs/LRM.pdf). These messages may be turned off in two ways:
    
    (1) Setting the environment variable SC_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS to DISABLE:
    
        setenv SC_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS DISABLE
        
    (2) By using the following call as the first line of sc_main:

            sc_report_handler::set_actions("/IEEE_Std_1666/deprecated", 
                SC_DO_NOTHING);


9) Known Problems       
=================

  - The use of the DEBUG_SYSTEMC macro does not work properly with certain
    compilers (e.g., gcc 2.95.x) if it was not also specified when the
    SystemC library was built. The problem is caused by the use of the
    library compiled version of some inline methods. This problem does not
    appear to be present in the gcc 3.3, Solaris, and aCC compilers.
    The work-around is to specify DEBUG_SYSTEMC when the SystemC library
    is built.


10) Fixed-point library
=======================

(No change from 2.0.1 Production.)

SystemC contains a fixed-point datatypes package.

Compile-time macro SC_INCLUDE_FX must be defined in order to build
applications that use fixed point types. You can specify a compiler
flag, e.g. g++ -DSC_INCLUDE_FX ... or use a define statement before
you include systemc.h, e.g.

  #define SC_INCLUDE_FX
  #include "systemc.h"

Due to the large size of the fixed-point datatypes header files,
compilation can take considerably more time.

If you want to use the fixed-point data types only (i.e., not data-
types sc_int, sc_uint, sc_bigint, sc_biguint), compilation time can be
reduced by defining compile-time macro SC_FX_EXCLUDE_OTHER (in addition
to SC_INCLUDE_FX).