Optimizing communication in embedded system co-simulation

The Pia hardware-software co-simulator provides substantial speedups over traditional co-simulation methods by permitting dynamic changes in the level of detail when simulating communication channels between system components. However, it places a burden on the designer to develop several communication routines, at different levels of abstraction, for each communication operation. This often requires an intimate understanding of both the simulator and the design being simulated. We present and demonstrate a way to use communication transaction annotations to provide a platform independent language for describing fast communication primitives. Additionally we show a tool for automatically generating some of these annotations, so that the designer does not even require an intimate understanding of the design under simulation. This can be important when simulating systems where the design itself is synthesized by automatic tools, and is liable to change frequently