Embedded Hardware/Software Design and Cosimulation using User Mode Linux and SystemC

The paper represents a software framework that can be used to assist the system level design of multiprocessor embedded systems. The proposed solution basically relies on the interaction between the user mode Linux virtual machine, which is used to abstract the model of the real programmable processor where the embedded software should run, and the hardware device simulated by SystemC. We can view the hardware device as a coprocessor to the CPU. In this way, designers will be able to program and validate embedded software as well as the device driver in the early stages of the design flow. Two experiments will be carried out to show that the proposed framework is capable to model a system containing software and hardware. The results show that the synchronization overhead in the proposed framework is acceptable. In Experiment 1, the transmission speed of the packets processed by the simulated switch is examined, while in Experiment 2, we analyze the JPEG compresion operation and show that the proposed framework can successfully model a hardware and software system with the consideration of an operating system and the driver for the hardware coprocessor.