Article

Parallelizing SystemC Kernel for Fast Hardware Simulation on SMP Machines

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Deepak RaviAuthors Info & Claims

PADS '09: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM/IEEE/SCS 23rd Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation

Pages 80 - 87

https://doi.org/10.1109/PADS.2009.25

Published: 22 June 2009 Publication History

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Abstract

SystemC is a system-level modeling language and simulation framework which facilitates design and verification of processor designs at different levels. Recently, SystemC is becoming a popular choice for designers of both System-On-Chip (SoC) and embedded processors, due to its adaptability at cycle as well as transaction levels, and ability to model concurrent processes. However, the single threaded simulation kernel inherent to SystemC, prevents it from utilizing the potential computing power of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) machines to speed up hardware simulation. We present a parallel SystemC simulation kernel, which is implemented using parallel programming techniques and leverages the parallel execution capabilities of multi-core machines to speed up hardware simulation. We discuss the mechanism we use for mapping parallel SystemC modules into different cores. Finally we report the performance of the parallelized SystemC kernel using a linear pipelined performance model and a pipelined performance model tailored to exhibit the behavior of real world simulation. Our results demonstrate that the performanceimprovement obtained by using parallelized SystemC for simulation of the above models is significant and improves with increasing design complexity of the simulated design and the number of cores in the machine running the simulators.

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Cited By

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Reder SRoth CBucher HSander OBecker J(2015)Adaptive algorithm and tool flow for accelerating SystemC on many-core architecturesMicroprocessors & Microsystems10.1016/j.micpro.2015.06.00139:8(1063-1075)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.micpro.2015.06.001
Bertacco VChatterjee DBombieri NFummi FVinco SKaushik APatel HMacii E(2013)On the use of GP-GPUs for accelerating compute-intensive EDA applicationsProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe10.5555/2485288.2485613(1357-1366)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2485288.2485613
Moy MMacii E(2013)Parallel programming with SystemC for loosely timed modelsProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe10.5555/2485288.2485294(9-14)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2485288.2485294
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Index Terms

Parallelizing SystemC Kernel for Fast Hardware Simulation on SMP Machines
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
  2. Real-time systems
2. Computing methodologies
  1. Modeling and simulation

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Published In

PADS '09: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM/IEEE/SCS 23rd Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation

June 2009

152 pages

ISBN:9780769537139

Publisher

IEEE Computer Society

United States

Publication History

Published: 22 June 2009

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Overall Acceptance Rate 398 of 779 submissions, 51%

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Cited By

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Reder SRoth CBucher HSander OBecker J(2015)Adaptive algorithm and tool flow for accelerating SystemC on many-core architecturesMicroprocessors & Microsystems10.1016/j.micpro.2015.06.00139:8(1063-1075)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.micpro.2015.06.001
Bertacco VChatterjee DBombieri NFummi FVinco SKaushik APatel HMacii E(2013)On the use of GP-GPUs for accelerating compute-intensive EDA applicationsProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe10.5555/2485288.2485613(1357-1366)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2485288.2485613
Moy MMacii E(2013)Parallel programming with SystemC for loosely timed modelsProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe10.5555/2485288.2485294(9-14)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2485288.2485294
Chen WDömer RMacii E(2013)Optimized out-of-order parallel discrete event simulation using predictionsProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe10.5555/2485288.2485293(3-8)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2485288.2485293
Chen WHan XDömer RRosenstiel WMacii E(2012)Out-of-order parallel simulation for ESL designProceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe10.5555/2492708.2492743(141-146)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2492708.2492743
Roth CReder SSander OHübner MBecker JRiley GQuaglia FHimmelspach J(2012)A Framework for exploration of parallel SystemC simulation on the single-chip cloud computerProceedings of the 5th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques10.5555/2263019.2263046(202-207)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2263019.2263046
Bombieri NVinco SBertacco VChatterjee DJerraya ACarloni LChang NFummi F(2012)SystemC simulation on GP-GPUsProceedings of the eighth IEEE/ACM/IFIP international conference on Hardware/software codesign and system synthesis10.1145/2380445.2380500(343-352)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2380445.2380500
Vinco SChatterjee DBertacco VFummi FGroeneveld PSciuto DHassoun S(2012)SAGAProceedings of the 49th Annual Design Automation Conference10.1145/2228360.2228382(115-120)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2228360.2228382
Roth CSander OKühnle MBecker JLiu JQuaglia FEidenbenz SGilmore S(2011)HLA-based simulation environment for distributed SystemC simulationProceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques10.5555/2151054.2151078(108-114)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2151054.2151078
Dömer RChen WHan XGerstlauer A(2011)Multi-core parallel simulation of system-level description languagesProceedings of the 16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference10.5555/1950815.1950885(311-316)Online publication date: 25-Jan-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1950815.1950885
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