Work in progress - ShelbySim: A holistic pedagogy-oriented simulator for computer systems

Abstract

ShelbySim is a student-friendly, pedagogy-oriented integrated development environment for designing, simulating, and evaluating a wide range of multidisciplinary, computer-based systems-engineering concepts and applications. Its components emphasize software, hardware, and a holistic combination of the two in realistic operational contexts. The software component provides a Java-like object-oriented programming language, Shelby, a full-fledged, transparent compiler with extensive logging, tracing, and inspection capabilities, and a runtime system for executing its programs. The hardware component supports designing and implementing conceptualized representations of embedded systems and computer architectures, which interoperate with the software. The interfacing, simulation, and evaluation components provide a flexible, interactive framework for running controlled experiments on the software and hardware. The simulation also generates extensive data for quantitative performance analysis, evaluation, and reporting.