HySim: a fast simulation framework for embedded software development

  • Authors:

  • Stefan Kraemer;Lei Gao;Jan Weinstock;Rainer Leupers;Gerd Ascheid;Heinrich Meyr

  • Affiliations:

  • RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany;RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany;RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany;RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany;RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany;RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

  • Venue:
  • CODES+ISSS '07 Proceedings of the 5th IEEE/ACM international conference on Hardware/software codesign and system synthesis
  • Year:
  • 2007

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Instruction Set Simulation (ISS) is widely used in system evaluation and software development for embedded processors. Despite the significant advancements in the ISS technology, it still suffers from low simulation speed compared to real hardware. Especially for embedded software developers simulation speed close to real time is important in order to efficiently develop complex software. In this paper a novel, retargetable, hybrid simulation framework (HySim) is presented which allows switching between native code execution and ISS-based simulation. To reach a certain state of an application as fast as possible, all platform-independent parts of the application are directly executed on the host, while the platform dependent code executes on the ISS. During the native code execution a performance estimation is conducted. A case study shows that speed-ups ranging from 7x to 72x can be achieved without compromising debugging accuracy. The performance estimation during native code execution shows an average error of 9.5%.