PSML: parallel system modeling and simulation language for electronic system level

Abstract

System-level description languages in electronic system level are domain-specific sequential simulation languages using the shared-everything model in discrete-event modeling and simulation terminology. They implement sequential process-interaction worldview to take advantage of event partitioning for ease of programming and modularity. Therefore, their reference simulators can only be executed on a single physical core. Fast and accurate simulation is highly desirable for efficient and effective system design due to the ever-increasing complexity of embedded and cyber physical systems. Parallel discrete-event simulation (PDES) is the main technique to solve this problem for large-scale system-level models. PDES works based on state space partitioning by using the so-called logical process worldview. This paper proposes parallel system modeling and simulation language (PSML), along with its formalized distributed parallel simulation kernel, that provides execution of hardware models in order to improve simulation speed significantly. It will be shown that the proposed framework results in linear, super-linear speedups ranging from 11 × to 32 × for large-scale, complex PSML models in comparison with the SystemC reference simulator on a 12-core host.