Accellera Announces Relicensing of SystemC Reference Implementation under the Apache 2.0 License

Elk Grove, Calif., August 15, 2016 -- Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera), the electronics industry organization focused on the creation and adoption of electronic design automation (EDA) and intellectual property (IP) standards, announced today that all SystemC supplemental material, including material contributed under the SystemC Open Source License Agreement prior to the merger of the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) and Accellera in 2011, has now been re-licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0.

“This is a significant milestone for Accellera and the SystemC community,” stated Shishpal Rawat, Accellera Systems Initiative chair. “Having all SystemC supplemental material, such as proof-of-concept and reference implementations, user guides and examples, under the widely used and industry-preferred Apache 2.0 license will make it easier for companies to more readily contribute further improvements to the supplemental material. We have been working with all of the contributing companies over the past 18 months to ensure that we could offer SystemC users a clear path to use and improve the SystemC supplemental material, and we are very proud of the efforts of our team to make this happen.”

The SystemC Open Source License used for the supplemental material required a lengthier contribution process that will no longer be necessary under Apache 2.0. Other Accellera supplemental material already available under Apache 2.0 includes the base class library of the Universal Verification Methodology (UVM).

License statements for some SystemC supplemental materials have been updated and are available for download from the Accellera website under Apache 2.0. The rest will follow soon. Other Accellera standards documents such as Language Reference Manuals (LRM) remain unchanged and are maintained and available under Accellera or IEEE copyright and license agreements.

About Accellera Systems Initiative
Accellera Systems Initiative is an independent, not-for profit organization dedicated to create, support, promote and advance system-level design, modeling and verification standards for use by the worldwide electronics industry. The organization accelerates standards development and, as part of its ongoing partnership with the IEEE, its standards are contributed to the IEEE Standards Association for formal standardization and ongoing change control. For more information, please visit www.accellera.org. Find out more about membership. Follow @accellera on Twitter or to comment, please use #accellera. Accellera Global Sponsors are: Cadence, Mentor Graphics and Synopsys.