A non intrusive simulation-based trace system to analyse Multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip software

Multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoC) are sealing in complexity. Most part of the MPSoCs are concerned with this evolution: number of processors, memory hierarchy, interconnect systems. Due to this increase in complexity and the debugging and monitoring difficulties it implies, developing software targeting these platforms is very challenging. The need for methods and tools to assist the development process of the MPSoC software is mandatory. Classical debugging and profiling tools are not suited for use in the MPSoC context, because they lack adaptability and awareness of the parallelism. As virtual prototyping is today widely used in the development of MPSoC software, we advocate the use of simulation platforms for software analysis. We present a trace system that consists in tracing hardware events that are produced by models of multiprocessor platform components. The component models are modified in a non-intrusive way so that their behavior in simulation is not modified. Using this trace results allows to run precise analysis like data races detection targeting the software executed on the platform.