JIT-Based Context-Sensitive Timing Simulation for Efficient Platform Exploration

Fast and accurate predictions of a program’s execution time are essential during the design space exploration of embedded systems. In this paper, we present a novel approach for efficient context-sensitive timing simulations based on the LLVM IR code representation. Our approach allows evaluating simultaneously multiple hardware platform configurations with only one simulation run. State-of-the-art solutions are improved by speeding up the simulation throughput relying on the fast LLVM IR JIT execution engine. Results show on average over 94% prediction accuracy and a speedup of 200 times compared to interpretive simulations. The simulation performance reaches up to 300 MIPS when one HW configuration is assessed and it grows up to 1 GIPS evaluating four configurations in parallel. Additionally, we show that our approach can be utilized for producing early timing estimations that support the designers in mapping a system to heterogeneous hardware platforms.