Model-Based Virtual Prototype Acceleration

Abstract

Today, virtual prototypes are often employed for software development early in the design flow. There, high simulation speed may support fast development. So, the acceleration of virtual prototype simulation is important in the early phases of design. To accelerate virtual prototypes, complex prototype simulation can be prevented by exploiting model-specific knowledge. We replace complex event-driven interaction with execution of predefined traces. In particular, we show that, for many dataflow-dominated application models, such accelerating traces may be efficiently determined. Trace determination is based on a novel symbolic search technique. We show that virtual prototypes exploiting such traces may lead to a significant simulation time reduction. The benefits are quantified for the prototype of a SystemC/TLM network packet filter, where traces result in up to 30% simulation acceleration.