Object-oriented design of a cycle accurate re-configurable simulator toolkit for DSP processors

Abstract

Modern microprocessors are achieving phenomenal performance levels due to the advances in several enabling technologies. The increase of performance comes with greater complexity. The colossal complexity of modern microprocessors is attributed to various factors such as multiple functional units, out-of-order execution, branch prediction etc. The design of such complex super-scalar processors requires the use of sophisticated software tools. To facilitate processor development, the design and implementation of a processor is typically paralleled by the design and implementation of a simulator that can be used to avoid errors in the development process. Designers use functional and performance simulators to validate the functionality and to assess the performance of the processor for a given application. In this paper, object-oriented design of a cycle accurate re-configurable simulator toolkit is presented to speed up the design cycle of DSP processors and to avoid incurring the cost involved in the development of processor specific simulators.