An Approach to Software Performance Evaluation on Customized Embedded Processors

Abstract

Evaluation of software performance on a given customized embedded processor is an important step in the design space exploration of embedded system architectures. Such evaluations help system designers in taking early design decisions regarding the hardware architecture most suitable for the target application. Simulation based performance evaluations, although very accurate, can be prohibitively slower. In this paper, we present a novel hybrid approach consisting of an initial simulation run (one time) followed by analysis of intermediate level (IR) application code by an evaluation engine. Our results show that the evaluation engine can accurately (more than 95%) estimate the excecution cycles of application or application task on a given customized embedded processor while it is at least an order of magnitude faster in terms of time taken.