Leaderboard

I don't see any issue from the point of the LRM. From a methodology perspective, I think it depends on the abstraction level and use case you are targeting. On the side of modules representing actual hardware, I would probably prefer to have a port type stating clearly the width to have the compiler statically check for me the correct binding of ports and interfaces. For stimuli generators and monitors, a more generic base type is OK for me. Where it then interfaces with HW modules, I would insert a small adaptor. You may also consider to have a channel, which can bind to sc_int<W> and sc_int_base, and which then checks at elaboration time that the widths on all bound ports match.

This question cannot be answered with respect to the SystemC standard as the issue is heavily implementation dependent. I am aware of implementations where SC_THREAD is faster than SC_METHOD and visa versa. It is also not a good basis for evaluating SystemC itself since the issue of simulation performance almost always comes down to how SystemC was used and how the modeler wrote their SystemC model. I do know an awful lot of folks use SystemC inappropriately (e.g. using it for modeling RTL, where VHDL or SystemVerilog are much better suited). IEEE 1666-2011 calls out the desired behavior, and not the implementation. Note: I did a presentation on SystemC myths many years ago at NASCUG that included the myth about whether or not one should favor SC_METHOD over SC_THREAD for performance reasons. It is quite simply a poor way of making a decision when attempting to obtain performance.