Virtual synchronization technique with OS modeling for fast and time-accurate cosimulation

Abstract

Hardware/software cosimulation is the key process to shorten the design turn around time. We have proposed a novel technique, called virtual synchronization, for fast and time accurate cosimulation that involves interacting component simulators. We further extend the virtual synchronization technique with OS modeling for the case where multiple software tasks are executed under the supervision of a real-time operating system. The OS modeler models the RTOS overheads of context switching and tick interrupt handling as well as preemption behavior. While maintaining the timing accuracy to an acceptable level below a few percent, we could reduce the simulation time drastically compared with existing conservative approach by removing the need of time synchronization between simulators. It is confirmed with a preliminary experiment with a multimedia example that consists of four real-life tasks.