Center for Embedded Computer Systems University of California, Irvine Efficient Debugging and Tracing of System Level Designs Eric James Johnson, Andreas Gerstlauer, Rainer Doemer Technical Report CECS-06-08 May 8, 2006 Center for Embedded Computer Systems University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3425, USA (949) 824-8059
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected] http://www.cecs.uci.edu Efficient Debugging and Tracing of System Level Designs Eric James Johnson, Andreas Gerstlauer, Rainer Doemer Technical Report CECS-06-08 May 8, 2006 Center for Embedded Computer Systems University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-3425, USA (949) 824-8059
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected] http://www.cecs.uci.edu Abstract System Level Design Languages (SLDL) have been created to address the unique needs of system-on-a-chip (SOC) design. Among these needs are the ability to work from a specification model, perform architectural explorations, and refine the models to come up with a final model that may be synthesized into hardware and custom software components. The SpecC language in particular was designed with these goals in mind. Prior to the work described here, the SpecC design environment consisted of a compiler, simulator, and EDA tools for exploring architectures and refining of models. Tools for debug and analysis of simulations were not widely available. We describe the design and implementation of new software APIs for debugging and new capabilities within the simulator for producing simulation logs, which can be used as debugging tools and for performing system architecture analysis. This work paves the way for more sophisticated analysis tools that hold the promise of providing designers with better feedback for performing system architecture explorations.