SSIM: A Software Levelized Compiled-Code Simulator

Abstract

This paper presents a new logic simulation technique that uses software levelized compiled-code (LCC) for synchronous designs. Three approaches are proposed: C source code, target machine code and interpreted code. The evaluation speed for the software LCC simulator (SSIM) is about 140,000 (gate) evaluations per second using C source code or target machine code, or 50,000 evaluations per second using interpreted code. It is about 40 to 100 times slower than the AIDA hardware LCC simulator, but is about one order of magnitude faster than a traditional software event simulator. For a 32-bit multiplier with gate activity more than 100%, experiments indicate that SSIM runs about 250 to 1,000 times faster than the AIDA event simulator that evaluates about 4,500 gates per second.