Advanced Methods of Microprocessor Simulation

Embedded systems have become indivisible part of our everyday activities.They are dedicated devices performing a particular job. A computing core ofmore complicated embedded systems is formed by one or more application-specificinstruction set processor. Therefore, powerful tools for processors developmentare necessary. One of the most important phases is the testing and optimizationphase of the processor design and target software. In the testing phase, themost often used tool is a simulator. The simulator can discover bugs in theprocessor design and target software before the embedded system realization.This thesis describes several advanced methods of processor simulation, whichcan be used in the different phases of processor development; from the fastsimulation of the early design to detailed simulation of the hardwarerealization. In the optimization phase, the most frequently used tool is a profiler.The profiler can uncover problematic parts, such as bottleneck points, in theprocessor design or in target software. Then, using the results from theprofiler, the designer can easily find which parts of the processor design or targetsoftware should be modified to get a better performance or reduce the power-consumption.In this thesis, two methods of profiling are described; the first one is usefulfor processor design optimization and the second one is useful for targetsoftware optimization. Furthermore, the ways how to simulate and profilemultiprocessor systems are also described in this thesis. The processor ormultiprocessor system is designed using architecture description language.