Models

Introduction

Models are at the heart of an Origen application and can be thought of as object representations of the silicon in the application domain. Models can instantiate other models and they can be nested arbitrarily deep depending on the needs of your application.

For example, if your application is only concerned with generating dynamic documentation for a small number of devices, then it may be sufficient to have a single model representing each device.

If on the other hand, your application is concerned with generating complex design or test code, then a lot more information will be encapsulated within your models. In these cases your application will be much easier to manage using multiple models to represent the sub-blocks that make up the device or module in question.

Model responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Defining the architecture of the target device
• Defining what bugs or features are present in the target device
• Defining register and bit maps
• Defining any other attributes of the target device, e.g. memory size

Within the Origen ecosystem, the model is intended to be the master of the universe and everything from documents, to test patterns, even to the design IP itself, can be considered different ways of viewing or consuming the model.

It is important to spend the time to architect the models in an organized manner and one which closely resembles the silicon that you are trying to represent. Once the solid model foundation is in place, it then becomes very easy to decide where to add additional data in the future.