AccSiM: State-Aware Simulation Acceleration for Simulink Models

Abstract

Simulink has been widely used in embedded software development, which supports simulation to validate the correctness of models. However, as the scale and complexity of models in industrial applications grow, it is time-consuming for the simulation engine of Simulink to achieve high coverage and detect potential errors, especially accumulative errors. In this article, we propose AccSiM, an accelerating model simulation method for Simulink models via code generation. AccSiM generates simulation functionality code for Simulink models through simulation oriented instrumentation, including runtime data collection, data diagnosis, and state-aware acceleration. The final simulation code is constructed by composing all the instrumentation code with actor code generated from a predefined template library and integrating test cases import. After compiling and executing the code, AccSiM generates simulation results including coverage and diagnostic information. We implemented AccSiM and evaluated it on several benchmark Simulink models. Compared to Simulink’s simulation engine, AccSiM shows a $215.3\times $ improvement in simulation efficiency, significantly reduces the time required for detecting errors. Furthermore, through the state-aware acceleration method, AccSiM yielded an additional $2.8{\times }$ speedup. AccSiM also achieved greater coverage within equivalent time.