Possibility of ESL: A software centric system design for multicore SoC in the upstream phase

The embedded systems for which both hardware and software are rapidly advancing and expanding, there is a growing need to be able to comprehensively and quantitatively estimate system performance at an early stage in the design process, especially multi-core based SoC. But it can be difficult to estimate system performance of actual target by employing only simple estimation methods. By using ESL technology, without implemented hardware, that enables high-precision assessment of system performance with software that runs on OS. By applying proposed assessment environment during upstream design of target system, it enables to research the characteristics of performance, bottle-neck and avoid the risk of the redesign. It will be the key-issue of ESL methodology. It might be tightly related with software architecture and it is different point of view from typical upstream design of hardware. We developed ESL based simulation environment for modeling logic SoC used in mobile phones at the upstream design phase (during planning phase, before logic design). We achieved high-precision assessment of system performance by using application level software benchmarks that runs on the Symbian OS, and at operating speeds that allow for iterated executions over a short time.