An Efficient TLM/T Modeling and Simulation Environment Based on Conservative Parallel Discrete Event Principles

The paper presents an innovative simulation scheme to speed-up simulations of multi-clusters multi-processors SoCs at the TLM/T (transaction level model with time) abstraction level. The hardware components of the SoC architecture are written in standard SystemC. The goal is to describe the dynamic behavior of a given software application running on a given hardware architecture (including the dynamic contention in the interconnect and the cache effects), in order to provide the system designer with the same reliable timing information as a cycle accurate simulation, with a simulation speed similar to a TLM simulation. The key idea is to apply parallel discrete event simulation (PDES) techniques to a collection of communicating SystemC SC-THREAD. Experimental results show a simulation speedup of a factor up to 50 versus a BCA simulation (bus cycle accurate), for a timing error lower than 10^-3