Hardware-software co-simulation for medical x-ray control units

In this paper we present our solution to master the complexity of product adaption cycles of a medical X-ray control unit. We present the real hardware and software platform and our mapping of it to a virtual X-ray control unit, implemented as our hardware-software co-simulation. To reduce complexity for hardware developers, we developed our own XML-based abstract system description language which is mapped onto instantiations of parameterizable SystemC template modules. We verified the correctness of our virtual X-ray control unit by co-simulating unmodified software to hardware components, which we implemented in our system description language from the specification of the real system. Due to reduced complexity of our virtual X-ray control unit, it can be used as a time and cost saving test platform for future hardware and software adaption cycles.