Real-time operating system services for realistic SystemC simulation models of embedded systems

Abstract

The design process of embedded systems moves currently towards higher levels of abstraction. As a consequence, a need arises for an early and realistic assessment of system level design decisions. In order to provide the early access, an automatic generation of its simulation models is advocated. While Verilog and VHDL are being extended in order to improve their system-level capabilities, SystemC community is intensively extending SystemC to software modeling features. In this sense, SystemC support for a realistic assessment of embedded system in the process of develop-validate-and-test its software is advocated. This step is done before any decisions with respect to processor and operating system has been finalized, as well as before an executable platform model and prototype board becomes available. Moreover, while execution properties of embedded software processes, which more and more dominate the functionality of embedded systems, can considerably vary both due to processor pipeline and cache structures, the chosen scheduling policy influences distinctly the execution properties. Unfortunately, the current version of SystemC is still lack of that software modeling support. Therefore, the modeling capability of SystemC is being extended in this paper by generic real-time operating system services providing more realistic software modeling features. The features cover also modelling dynamic process creation, process control, pre-emption, process prioritization, inter-process communication, and synchronization, as well as static and dynamic scheduling. Design alternatives can thus be easily validated and different scheduling policies can be explored. The figures of merit of the proposed approach are demonstrated by means of the embedded information processing of a mobile robot. 1.