Event-driven on-line co-simulation with fault diagnostic

Abstract

This paper introduces a functional co-validation technique realized inside co-simulation methodology, environment and tool. On-line co-simulation intends to concurrently simulate an execution of original binary applications and their binary translated images. Both, original and translated instructions execute under an Instruction Set Simulator (ISS) in a Virtual System Prototyping Environment (VSPE) that models hardware platform or chipset targeted to a given Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). Real world applications accounting for billions of instructions executing in VSPE under Operating System (OS) control may exhibit hard to reproduce and debug fatal failures. When dealing with such enormous state space, co-validation becomes a critical factor under tight schedules of the software/hardware co-design. The paper presents a mathematical model that allows for abstracting the huge co-simulated state space and special events of interest. A fault diagnostic mode implemented inside the tool couples run time software exception handling mechanisms with the events thus accommodating application runs to runtime failures for further debugging guidance. The tool implemented in C++ runs seamlessly inside VSPE.