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Improving processor hardware compiled cycle accurate simulation using program abstraction

Published: 17 March 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Verification is an important step in the development of real-time embedded systems. The validation of a real-time system uses a timing accurate simulator and, when the actual binary code is used, a cycle accurate simulator (CAS). However, a CAS is slow especially when the simulated processor is complex and the application is big. One way to improve the speed of a CAS is to use compiled simulation. In this scheme, the application binary code model is merged with the processor model. This allows to remove operations from the simulator and to speed up it. In this paper, we show how to use an abstraction of the program and improve the handling of functions calls. The resulted simulator is temporally and functionally equivalent. This technique improves simulation speed by more than 50% over the speed of an interpreted CAS.

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  1. Improving processor hardware compiled cycle accurate simulation using program abstraction

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          SIMUTools '14: Proceedings of the 7th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques
          March 2014
          211 pages
          ISBN:9781631900075

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          • EAI: The European Alliance for Innovation
          • Create-Net
          • ICST

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          ICST (Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering)

          Brussels, Belgium

          Publication History

          Published: 17 March 2014

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          Author Tags

          1. compiled simulation
          2. cycle accurate simulation
          3. processor hardware simulation
          4. real-time systems

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