Hybrid Simulation Environment for rapid MSP430 system design test and validation using MSPsim and SystemC

Modern, energy-efficient sensor nodes cover a wide variety of application scenarios. For a fast adapting of these devices to new requirements a concurrent development process of software and hardware extensions must be feasible. Here we present a Hybrid Simulation Environment (HSE) that combines a cycle accurate simulator for MSP microcontrollers written in Java and SystemC, which allows description of hardware at reasonable abstraction level. The HSE significantly speeds up the simulation of new components compared to conventional simulation engines.