A Functional Test Framework to Observe MPSoC Power Management Techniques in Virtual Platforms

Abstract

Today's Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are witnessing a growing complexity in terms of the number of components and computational power in order to meet the requirements of nowadays applications. For this reason and due to their energy efficiency, Multiprocessor system-on-chips (MPSoC) are becoming ubiquitous. Yet, since these systems are often used in battery-driven and/or small housing use cases, the correct configuration of their power management techniques is an important factor in system design and can be related to possible safety aspects of the system. This calls for an adequate test framework, which is able to observe the power management functionalities of CPS, even before the actual hardware platform is available. The use of virtual platforms for functional validation, that allows executing the CPS's real target platform compatible application binary code on a generic host computer, is currently being adopted by the industry. This work focuses on enhancing industrial OVP virtual platforms by a functional test framework of the power management techniques. We will demonstrate and evaluate how this framework maintains to observe the power management techniques of the system under test. The evaluation uses a Xilinx ZC702 board based on a Xilinx Zynq-7000MPSoC and its correspondent virtual platform in OVP. Results show that the functional test framework is able to analyze the different modes of operation regarding the power management techniques of the Xilinx Zynq processing system.