A cycle-accurate synthesizable MIPS simulator in Simulink

Abstract

We introduce a novel methodology for creating a synthesizable, cycle-accurate simulator of the MIPS32 processor with concise, high-level programming expressions using Simulink and other matlab tools. The simulator, named SimuMIPS, is capable of running binaries generated by the GNU gcc compiler and associated binutils. It can be easily configured, modified and extended not only for academic instruction but also to be included in commercial SOC products. Synthesizable instantiations of SimuMIPS in Verilog and VHDL may be generated by Simulink HDL Coder for FPGA programming and system-on-chip prototyping. In addition, the SimuMIPS simulator can run on embedded processors, rapid prototyping boards, and off-the-shelf microprocessors via the Embedded Coder generated C and C++ implementations.