基于MADL语言的时钟精确级仿真器生成

随着处理器设计复杂度的增加,设计前期在系统级别进行规划对芯片各方面性能的影响日趋增加.由于系统级设计中需要时钟精确级仿真器(CAS)进行设计空间探索(DSE),获得芯片各方面性能,从而帮助确定设计方案,因此快速生成CAS成为芯片设计成败的关键.文中提出了利用MADL语言构建设计空间探索平台的方法,具体探讨了CAS生成的方法,并设计和实现了基于ARM7处理器的CAS.实践证明,利用MADL生成CAS,代码生成效率大大提高,且性能更加优良,能精确地模拟出指令在每个时钟周期里在流水线上流动的情况,完全适合在芯片设计初期的DSE工作.

MADL Based Cycle Accurate Simulator Generation

As the complexity of CPU design increases,system-level design in early development stage is imposing more and more influence upon the chip performance.Therefore,generating a cycle-accurate-simulator(CAS) plays a key role in the chip design.It can help the designers to explore the design space and evaluate the performance of the design.A method for building the design-space-exploration platform and generating CAS using MADL is proposed in this paper,and an implementation of CAS based on ARM7 is also given.It has proved that using MADL to generate CAS is much easier and the performance of the CAS can be much better for it can accurately simulate the action of instruction flow in the pipeline each clock cycle.